Functional, Hierarchical Colloidal Liquid Crystal Gels and Liquid Crystal Elastomers Nanocomposites. Final Report
Biological systems rely on a hierarchy of dynamic, complex and reconfigurable compartments to carry out functions essential for life. This hierarchical organization serves as an amplifier that allows highly localized, molecular events to propagate into the mesoscale, resulting in dynamic functional properties of biological systems that have not yet been fully realized in synthetic material designs. We pursued a program of research in which we recreated such principles using synthetic liquid crystals (LC) as a versatile platform. We elucidated new hierarchical design strategies that heavily leverage surface anchoring, coexisting phases and interfacial tension gradient to realize equilibrium and non-equilibrium, dynamic mesoscale phenomena in the context of micrometer-sized LC droplets containing multiple compartments. Specifically, we unmasked how equilibrium and dynamical phenomena emerged from hierarchical organizations in reconfigurable, thermotropic liquid crystalline assemblies. The long-term impact of the project is to advance new hierarchical designs of complex soft matter systems in which biomimetic principles, including the propagation of events or information over multiple temporal and spatial scales, are enacted in a facile manner.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0004025
- OSTI ID:
- 1630990
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-SC0004025
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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