Phase behaviors of colloidal analogs of bent-core liquid crystals

Science Advances
Yang YangZhihong Nie

Abstract

Bent-core liquid crystal (LC) molecules are known to form mesophases with fascinating polar order and supramolecular chirality despite the achiral nature of the mesogens. The assembly of colloidal particles with geometrical similarity to bent-core molecular mesogens not only provides new insights into the physical behaviors of atoms or molecules but also leads to new materials with broad applications. Despite tremendous progress in colloidal synthesis and assembly, there has been a lack of colloidal model systems of bent-core molecular mesogens for LC property discovery and application development. This article describes a systematic study on the phase behaviors of colloidal analogs of bent-core LC mesogens in both experiments and simulations. We demonstrated that bent rods with controlled bending angle (α) and aspect ratio (L/D, with L and D as the length and diameter of each rod arm, respectively) can spontaneously assemble into several typical banana phases including smectic A, smectic C, synclinic tilted antiferroelectric-like smectic, and twist smectic phases, resembling bent-core LC molecules. The formation and transition of these phases were found to be strongly dependent on the geometric parameters of rods. Phase diagra...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 15, 2020·The Journal of Chemical Physics·Carmine AnzivinoMarjolein Dijkstra
Aug 21, 2020·Science·Carla Fernández-RicoRoel P A Dullens
Jun 3, 2021·Entropy·Nkosinathi DlaminiGiuseppe Pellicane
Jan 29, 2019·Chemistry of Materials : a Publication of the American Chemical Society·Fabian HagemansArnout Imhof

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
polarized
optical microscopy
circular dichroism

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