Emergent biaxiality in chiral hybrid liquid crystals.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 39550383.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-54236-8 and PMC identifier 11569233.
- 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
Biaxial nematic liquid crystals are fascinating systems sometimes referred to as the Higgs boson of soft matter because of experimental observation challenges. Here we describe unexpected states of matter that feature biaxial orientational order of colloidal supercritical fluids and gases formed by sparse rodlike particles. Colloidal rods with perpendicular surface boundary conditions exhibit a strong biaxial symmetry breaking when doped into conventional chiral nematic fluids. Minimization of free energy prompts these particles to orient perpendicular to the local molecular director and the helical axis, thereby imparting biaxiality on the hybrid molecular-colloidal system. The ensuing phase diagram features colloidal gas and liquid and supercritical colloidal fluid states with long-range biaxial orientational symmetry, as supported by analytical and numerical modeling at all hierarchical levels of ordering. Unlike for nonchiral hybrid systems, dispersions in chiral nematic hosts display biaxial orientational order at vanishing colloid volume fractions, promising both technological and fundamental research utility.