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Abstract

Smart windows based on liquid crystal (LC) have made significant advancements over the past decade. As critical mediators of outdoor light entering indoor spaces, these windows can dynamically and rapidly adjust their transmittance to adapt to changing environmental conditions, thereby enhancing living comfort. To further improve device performance, reduce energy consumption, and ensure greater safety for everyday use, scientists have recently focused on reducing driving voltage and enhancing contrast ratio, achieving notable progress in these areas. This article provides a concise overview of the fundamental principles and major applications of LC smart windows. It systematically reviews recent advancements over the past two years in improving these two key optical properties for variable transmittance LC smart windows, both internally and externally, and highlights the remaining challenges alongside potential future directions for development.

Details

1009240
Business indexing term
Title
Recent Progress in Liquid Crystal-Based Smart Windows with Low Driving Voltage and High Contrast
Author
Zhou Yitong 1 ; Li, Guoqiang 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 College of Optical, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China; [email protected], Intelligent Optical Imaging and Sensing Group, Institute of Optoelectronics, College of Future Information Technology, State Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Science and Technology, Shanghai Frontier Base of Intelligent Optoelectronics and Perception, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China 
 Intelligent Optical Imaging and Sensing Group, Institute of Optoelectronics, College of Future Information Technology, State Key Laboratory of Photovoltaic Science and Technology, Shanghai Frontier Base of Intelligent Optoelectronics and Perception, Fudan University, Shanghai 200438, China 
Publication title
Photonics; Basel
Volume
12
Issue
8
First page
819
Number of pages
28
Publication year
2025
Publication date
2025
Publisher
MDPI AG
Place of publication
Basel
Country of publication
Switzerland
Publication subject
e-ISSN
23046732
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
Document type
Journal Article
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2025-08-16
Milestone dates
2025-06-29 (Received); 2025-08-11 (Accepted)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
16 Aug 2025
ProQuest document ID
3244049839
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/recent-progress-liquid-crystal-based-smart/docview/3244049839/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
© 2025 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2025-09-02
Database
ProQuest One Academic