Double-twist cylinders in liquid crystalline cholesteric blue phases observed by transmission electron microscopy.
Double-twist cylinders in liquid crystalline cholesteric blue phases observed by transmission electron microscopy.
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DOI：
10.1038/srep16180
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发表时间：
2015-11-04
影响因子：
4.6
通讯作者：
Ozaki M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Tanaka S;Yoshida H;Kawata Y;Kuwahara R;Nishi R;Ozaki M
胆甾蓝相是液晶相，其中组成棒状分子自发形成三维螺旋结构。尽管理论上预测它们是由圆柱形子结构组成的，其中液晶分子是双重扭曲的，但还没有对这种结构的排列进行真实的空间观察。通过透射电子显微镜对具有可控晶格面取向的光聚合蓝相进行了真实的空间观察，并对蓝相I和II的晶格结构进行了比较。这两个系统显示出明显不同的对比，反映了理论预测，身体中心和简单的立方排列的双扭圆柱。透射电子显微镜也揭示了两个蓝相的不同倾向，以对齐单向摩擦表面。因此，我们表明，透射电子显微镜观察控制，光聚合液晶可以是一个强大的工具，调查复杂的液晶秩序。
Cholesteric blue phases are liquid crystalline phases in which the constituent rod-like molecules spontaneously form three-dimensional, helical structures. Despite theoretical predictions that they are composed of cylindrical substructures within which the liquid crystal molecules are doubly twisted, real space observation of the arrangement of such structures had not been performed. Through transmission electron microscopy of photopolymerized blue phases with controlled lattice plane orientations, we report real space observation and comparison of the lattice structures of blue phases I and II. The two systems show distinctly different contrasts, reflecting the theoretically predicted, body centred and simple cubic arrangement of the double-twist cylinders. Transmission electron microscopy also reveals different tendencies of the two blue phases to align on unidirectionally rubbed surfaces. We thus show that TEM observation of alignment-controlled, photopolymerized liquid crystals can be a powerful tool to investigate complex liquid crystalline order.