Cuboidal liquid crystal phases under multiaxial geometrical frustration

Palacio-Betancur, Viviana; Armas-Pérez, Julio C.; Villada-Gil, Stiven; Abbott, Nicholas L.; Hernández-Ortiz, Juan P.; de Pablo, Juan J.

doi:10.1039/C9SM02021G

Title: Cuboidal liquid crystal phases under multiaxial geometrical frustration

Journal Article · Tue Jan 14 00:00:00 EST 2020 · Soft Matter

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/C9SM02021G· OSTI ID:1630073

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^[2]; Villada-Gil, Stiven ^[3]; Abbott, Nicholas L. ^[4];

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Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)
Univ. of Guanajuato (Mexico)
Univ. Nacional de Colombia-Sede Medellín (Colombia)
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)

Cuboidal liquid crystal phases – the so-called blue phases – consist of a network of topological defects arranged into a cubic symmetry. They exhibit striking optical properties, including Bragg reflection in the visible range and fast response times. Confining surfaces can interfere with the packing of such a network, leading to structures that have not been explored before. In this work, a Landau–de Gennes free energy formalism for the tensor alignment field Q is used to investigate the behavior of chiral liquid crystals under non-isotropic confinement. The underlying free energy functional is solved by relying on a Monte Carlo method that facilitates efficient exploration of configuration space. The results of simulations are expressed in terms of phase diagrams as a function of chirality and temperature for three families of spheroids: oblate, spherical, and prolate. Upon deformation, blue phases adapt and transform to accommodate the geometrical constraints, thereby resulting in a wider range of thermal stability. For oblate spheroids, confinement interferes with the development of a full blue phase structure, resulting on a combination of half skyrmions. For prolate spheroids, the blue phases are hybridized and exhibit features of blue phases I and II. More generally, it is shown that mechanical deformation provides an effective means to control, manipulate and stabilize blue phases and cholesterics confined in tactoids.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC); Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States); Univ. of Chicago, IL (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); COLCIENCIAS

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0004025; 110-165-843-748

OSTI ID:: 1630073

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1591699; OSTI ID: 1603448

Journal Information:: Soft Matter, Vol. 16, Issue 4; ISSN 1744-683X

Publisher:: Royal Society of ChemistryCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 9 works

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