Liquid crystalline blue phase materials with three-dimensional nanostructures

Liquid crystalline blue phases (BPs), being regarded as an emerging photonic material, have attracted enormous research interest owing to their unique periodic nanostructures and potential applications in displays, sensing, switching, lasing and other fields. In this paper, we have reviewed the recent progress on BP materials, including broadening the BP temperature range, controlling the BP-lattice orientations and stimuli-responsive BPs. These advances are dedicated to constructing stable BPs and fabricating monodomain BPs or single-crystal BPs, and dynamically controlling the nanostructures of BPs under diverse external stimuli, such as light, electric field, heat, magnetic field and stretching, etc. This work provides significant insights into the construction and development of BP materials for novel liquid crystalline optical devices.