Self-assembly of colloid-cholesteric composites provides a possible route to switchable optical materials
Self-assembly of colloid-cholesteric composites provides a possible route to switchable optical materials
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DOI：
10.1038/ncomms4954
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发表时间：
2014-06
影响因子：
16.6
通讯作者：
K. Stratford;O. Henrich;J. Lintuvuori;Michael E. Cates;Davide Marenduzzo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
K. Stratford;O. Henrich;J. Lintuvuori;Michael E. Cates;Davide Marenduzzo
分散在液晶中的胶体粒子可以形成具有可调弹性和电光特性的新材料。在周期性的“蓝相”宿主中，粒子应该模板化成胶体晶体，在光子学、超材料和变换光学中具有潜在的用途。在这里，我们通过计算机模拟表明，胶体/胶体混合物可以产生规则的晶体，玻璃，分散的凝胶，孤立的集群，扭曲的环和起伏的胶体绳。这种结构可以通过颗粒浓度，并通过改变表面的相互作用的粒子和限制壁。这些新材料中有许多是亚稳态的：在相同的热力学条件下可以产生两种或更多种结构。所观察到的结构不仅取决于配制方案，而且还取决于所施加电场的历史。因此，这类新的软材料应该与智能玻璃和电子纸等光学技术的可切换、多稳态设备的设计相关。
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic ‘blue phase’ host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics, metamaterials and transformational optics. Here we show by computer simulation that colloid/cholesteric mixtures can give rise to regular crystals, glasses, percolating gels, isolated clusters, twisted rings and undulating colloidal ropes. This structure can be tuned via particle concentration, and by varying the surface interactions of the cholesteric host with both the particles and confining walls. Many of these new materials are metastable: two or more structures can arise under identical thermodynamic conditions. The observed structure depends not only on the formulation protocol but also on the history of an applied electric field. This new class of soft materials should thus be relevant to design of switchable, multistable devices for optical technologies such as smart glass and e-paper.