Quantifying nematic order in the evaporation-driven self-assembly of halloysite nanotubes: nematic islands and the critical aspect ratio.

Abstract

Halloysite nanotubes (HNTs) are naturally occurring clay minerals found in the Earth's crust that typically exist in the form of high aspect-ratio nanometer-long rods. Here, we investigate the evaporation-driven self-assembly process of HNTs and show that a highly polydisperse collection of HNTs self-sort into a spatially inhomogeneous structure, displaying a systematic variation in the resulting nematic order. Through detailed quantification using the nematic order parameter <i>S</i> and nematic correlation functions, we show the existence of well-defined isotropic-nematic transitions in the emerging structures. We also show that the onset of these transitions gives rise to the formation of <i>nematic islands</i>, a phase resembling ordered nematic domains surrounded by an isotropic phase, which grow in size with <i>S</i>. Detailed image analysis indicates a strong correlation between local <i>S</i> and the local aspect ratio, <i>L</i>/<i>D</i>, with nematic order possible only for rods with <i>L</i>/<i>D</i> ≥ 6.5 ± 1. Finally, we conclude that the observed phenomena directly result from aspect ratio-based sorting in our system. Altogether, our results provide a unique method of tuning the local microscopic structure in self-assembled HNTs using <i>L</i>/<i>D</i> as an external parameter.