Electro‐Optical Materials: Laser Rewritable Dichroics through Reconfigurable Organic Charge‐Transfer Liquid Crystals (Adv. Mater. 20/2018)

In article number 1706787, Bryan Kaehr, Joseph J. Reczek, and co-workers demonstrate reversible control over long-range molecular order in π-stacked donor–acceptor liquid crystals, which enables precise manipulation of the presence and direction of optical dichroism by a laser-induced thermal gradient. By linearly polarized microscopy, a dichroic organic charge-transfer columnar liquid-crystal film shows passively cooled, randomly aligned regions and a “fast” written laser-patterned region that is completely isotropic.