Omnidirectional optical band gap for circularly polarized light in a nanocomposite cholesteric elastomer

In recent years, Liquid Crystal Elastomers (LCE), have become very important in researchs, due to it's possible applications to manufacture many optical devices as filters, actuators or transductors.
LCE combine properties of liquid crystals and ellastic properties of polymers, these materials are composed by mesogens joined into a chain of polymers, their orientations may be changed by action of mechanical forces. Due to orientation change of mesogens in LCE, optical properties, as reflectance or transmitance can be modified. Reflectance and transmitance in LCE can be substantially modified by the effect of a particulated medium.
In this work we have studied a nano-composite consisting of a chiral elastomer doped with metallic nano spheres. We show that Bragg phenomenon occurs in this chiral media, hence this composite works as a complex circular polarization optical controller handle by the filling factor of nano spheres, incidence angle of light and stretching of the sample.