Liquid-crystalline behavior on dumbbell-shaped colloids and the observation of chiral blue phases

Guangdong Chen, Hanwen Pei, Xuefei Zhang, Wei Shi, Mingjie Liu, Charl F. J. Faul, Bai Yang, Yan Zhao, Kun Liu, Zhongyuan Lu (), Zhihong Nie () and Yang Yang ()
Additional contact information
Guangdong Chen: Jilin University
Hanwen Pei: Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xuefei Zhang: Fudan University
Wei Shi: Beihang University
Mingjie Liu: Beihang University
Charl F. J. Faul: University of Bristol
Bai Yang: Jilin University
Yan Zhao: Jihua Laboratory
Kun Liu: Jilin University
Zhongyuan Lu: Jilin University
Zhihong Nie: Fudan University
Yang Yang: Jilin University

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Colloidal liquid crystals are an emerging class of soft materials that naturally combine the unique properties of both liquid crystal molecules and colloidal particles. Chiral liquid crystal blue phases are attractive for use in fast optical displays and electrooptical devices, but the construction of blue phases is limited to a few chiral building blocks and the formation of blue phases from achiral ones is often counterintuitive. Herein we demonstrate that achiral dumbbell-shaped colloids can assemble into a rich variety of characteristic liquid crystal phases, including nematic phases with lock structures, smectic phase, and particularly experimental observation of blue phase III with double-twisted chiral columns. Phase diagrams from experiments and simulations show that the existence and stable regions of different liquid crystal phases are strongly dependent on the geometrical parameters of dumbbell-shaped colloids. This work paves a new route to the design and construction of blue phases for photonic applications.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33125-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-33125-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-33125-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().