Blue Phases: Prior Art, Potential Polar Effects, Challenges

Currently, we witness a fabulous revival of blue phases. For many years, the small temperature range of blue phase stability in traditional systems seemed to restrict the extremely interesting research on these defect structures to purely academic questions. But the dramatically extended stability range in polymer-stabilized blue phases and dimers makes even progress of the current display technology by means of blue phases feasible. In this paper, state-of-the-art properties of blue phases are reviewed. Some challenges for future investigations are pointed out, with an emphasis on potential polar effects.