Bistable salt doped cholesteric liquid crystals light shutter

•A light shutter, which exhibits two bistable states at 0V, is developed.•Transparent state has 90% transmittance.•Doped salt enables different electro-optical responses.•The shutter is very energy-saving. Liquid crystals have been used to make electrically switchable light shutters (windows), but most of them are monostable: opaque in the absence of applied voltage and transparent when a voltage is applied. Here we report a bistable switchable light shutter based on cholesteric liquid crystal doped with tetrabutylammonium bromide. The salt makes it possible for the liquid crystal to have different electro-optical responses to applied voltages with different frequencies. The shutter can be either transparent or opaque in the absence of applied voltage. It can be switched from the transparent state to the opaque state by applying a low frequency (60Hz) voltage pulse and switched back to the transparent state by applying a high frequency (2kHz) voltage pulse. Because of the bistability, it can be used for energy-saving switchable privacy control and architectural windows.