This title appears in the Scientific Report :
2019
Please use the identifier:
http://hdl.handle.net/2128/23803 in citations.
Please use the identifier: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56729-9 in citations.
Colloidal Liquid Crystals Confinedto Synthetic Tactoids
Colloidal Liquid Crystals Confinedto Synthetic Tactoids
When a liquid crystal forming particles are confined to a spatial volume with dimensions comparable to that of their own size, they face a complex trade-off between their global tendency to align and the local constraints imposed by the boundary conditions. This interplay may lead to a non-trivial o...
Saved in:
Personal Name(s): | Garlea, Ioana C. (Corresponding author) |
---|---|
Dammone, Oliver / Alvarado, Jose / Nooteboom, Valerie / Jia, Yunfei / Koenderink, Gijsje H. / Aarts, Dirk G. A. L. / Lettinga, M. P. (Corresponding author) / Mulder, Bela M. | |
Contributing Institute: |
Weiche Materie; ICS-3 |
Published in: | Scientific reports, 9 (2019) S. 20391 |
Imprint: |
[London]
Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature
2019
|
PubMed ID: |
31892707 |
DOI: |
10.1038/s41598-019-56729-9 |
Document Type: |
Journal Article |
Research Program: |
Functional Macromolecules and Complexes |
Link: |
Restricted OpenAccess Restricted OpenAccess |
Publikationsportal JuSER |
Please use the identifier: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-56729-9 in citations.
When a liquid crystal forming particles are confined to a spatial volume with dimensions comparable to that of their own size, they face a complex trade-off between their global tendency to align and the local constraints imposed by the boundary conditions. This interplay may lead to a non-trivial orientational patterns that strongly depend on the geometry of the confining volume. This novel regime of liquid crystalline behavior can be probed with colloidal particles that are macro-aggregates of biomolecules. Here we study director fields of filamentous fd-viruses in quasi-2D lens-shaped chambers that mimic the shape of tactoids, the nematic droplets that form during isotropic-nematic phase separation. By varying the size and aspect ratio of the chambers we force these particles into confinements that vary from circular to extremely spindle-like shapes and observe the director field using fluorescence microscopy. In the resulting phase diagram, next to configurations predicted earlier for 3D tactoids, we find a number of novel configurations. Using Monte Carlo Simulations, we show that these novel states are metastable, yet long-lived. Their multiplicity can be explained by the co-existence of multiple dynamic relaxation pathways leading to the final stable states |