Diffusionless transformation of soft cubic superstructure from amorphous to simple cubic and body-centered cubic phases

Jie Liu, Wenzhe Liu, Bo Guan, Bo Wang, Lei Shi, Feng Jin, Zhigang Zheng, Jingxia Wang, Tomiki Ikeda, Lei Jiang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In a narrow temperature window in going from the isotropic to highly chiral orders, cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit so-called blue phases, consisting of different morphologies of long, space-filling double twisted cylinders. Those of cubic spatial symmetry have attracted considerable attention in recent years as templates for soft photonic materials. The latter often requires the creation of monodomains of predefined orientation and size, but their engineering is complicated by a lack of comprehensive understanding of how blue phases nucleate and transform into each other at a submicrometer length scale. In this work, we accomplish this by intercepting nucleation processes at intermediate stages with fast cross-linking of a stabilizing polymer matrix. We reveal using transmission electron microscopy, synchrotron small-angle X-ray diffraction, and angle-resolved microspectroscopy that the grid of double-twisted cylinders undergoes highly coordinated, diffusionless transformations. In light of our findings, the implementation of several applications is discussed, such as temperature-switchable QR codes, micro-area lasing, and fabrication of blue phase liquid crystals with large domain sizes.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3477
Number of pages13
JournalNature Communications
Volume12
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2021
Externally publishedYes

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