Chen Guangdong, Pei Hanwen, Zhang Xuefei, Shi Wei, Liu Mingjie, Faul Charl F J, Yang Bai, Zhao Yan, Liu Kun, Lu Zhongyuan, Nie Zhihong, Yang Yang
State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China.
State Key Laboratory of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, China.
Nat Commun. 2022 Sep 22;13(1):5549. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-33125-y.
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.
胶体液晶是一类新兴的软材料，它自然地结合了液晶分子和胶体颗粒的独特性质。手性液晶蓝相在快速光学显示器和电光器件中具有吸引力，但蓝相的构建仅限于少数手性结构单元，而非手性结构单元形成蓝相通常违反直觉。在此，我们证明非手性哑铃状胶体可以组装成多种特征液晶相，包括具有锁结构的向列相、近晶相，特别是对具有双扭曲手性柱的蓝相III的实验观察。实验和模拟得到的相图表明，不同液晶相的存在和稳定区域强烈依赖于哑铃状胶体的几何参数。这项工作为光子应用中蓝相的设计和构建开辟了一条新途径。
