Hu Wei, Wang Ling, Wang Meng, Zhong Tingjun, Wang Qian, Zhang Lanying, Chen Feiwu, Li Kexuan, Miao Zongcheng, Yang Dengke, Yang Huai
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering & Department of Materials Science and Engineering College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, PR China.
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, School of Chemistry and Biological Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, PR China.
Nat Commun. 2021 Mar 4;12(1):1440. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21564-y.
Fabricating functional materials via molecular self-assembly is a promising approach, and precisely controlling the molecular building blocks of nanostructures in the self-assembly process is an essential and challenging task. Blue phase liquid crystals are fascinating self-assembled three-dimensional nanomaterials because of their potential information displays and tuneable photonic applications. However, one of the main obstacles to their applications is their narrow temperature range of a few degrees centigrade, although many prior studies have broadened it to tens via molecular design. In this work, a series of tailored uniaxial rodlike mesogens disfavouring the formation of blue phases are introduced into a blue phase system comprising biaxial dimeric mesogens, a blue phase is observed continuously over a temperature range of 280 °C, and the range remains over 132.0 °C after excluding the frozen glassy state. The findings show that the molecular synergistic self-assembly behavior of biaxial and uniaxial mesogens may play a crucial role in achieving the ultrastable three-dimensional nanostructure of blue phases.
通过分子自组装制备功能材料是一种很有前景的方法，而在自组装过程中精确控制纳米结构的分子构建单元是一项至关重要且具有挑战性的任务。蓝相液晶是迷人的自组装三维纳米材料，因其在信息显示和可调谐光子应用方面的潜力。然而，其应用的主要障碍之一是其仅几摄氏度的狭窄温度范围，尽管许多先前的研究已通过分子设计将其拓宽至几十摄氏度。在这项工作中，一系列不利于蓝相形成的定制单轴棒状液晶基元被引入到包含双轴二聚体液晶基元的蓝相体系中，在280 °C的温度范围内持续观察到蓝相，并且在排除冻结玻璃态后该范围仍超过132.0 °C。研究结果表明，双轴和单轴液晶基元的分子协同自组装行为可能在实现蓝相的超稳定三维纳米结构中起关键作用。
Zotero 插件
