Splay-bend nematic phases of bent colloidal silica rods induced by polydispersity.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36456560.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-34658-y and PMC identifier 9715686.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Liquid crystal (LC) phases are in between solids and liquids with properties of both. Nematic LCs composed of rod-like molecules or particles exhibit long-range orientational order, yielding characteristic birefringence, but they lack positional order, allowing them to flow like a liquid. This combination of properties as well as their sensitivity to external fields make nematic LCs fundamental for optical applications e.g. liquid crystal displays (LCDs). When rod-like particles become bent, spontaneous bend deformations arise in the LC, leading to geometric frustration which can be resolved by complementary twist or splay deformations forming intriguing twist-bend (N<sub>TB</sub>) and splay-bend (N<sub>SB</sub>) nematic phases. Here, we show experimentally that the elusive N<sub>SB</sub> phases can be stabilized in systems of polydisperse micron-sized bent silica rods. Our results open avenues for the realization of N<sub>TB</sub> and N<sub>SB</sub> phases of colloidal and molecular LCs.