Journal
ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES
Volume 11, Issue 9, Pages 9487-9495Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b18078
Keywords
blue-phase liquid crystal; chemically patterned surfaces; interfacial free energy; lattice orientation; single crystal
Funding
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division
- U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-AC02-06CH11357]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Chemically patterned surfaces can be used to selectively stabilize blue phases as macroscopic single crystals with a prescribed lattice orientation. By tailoring the interfacial free energy through the pattern characteristics, it is possible to set, with nanoscale precision, the optimal conditions to induce spontaneously blue-phase crystal nucleation on the patterned substrate where a uniform, defect-free, blue-phase single crystal is finally formed in a matter of seconds. The chemical patterns taken into consideration in this work are made up of alternated stripelike regions of homeotropic and planar anchoring. By varying the stripe pattern dimension, including the period and ratio of the planar/homeotropic anchoring width, it is possible to generate blue-phase I single crystals with (110) lattice orientation and blue-phase II single crystals with either the (100), (110), or (111) lattice orientation. Continuum mean-field calculations of the studied systems serve to explain, in terms of the free energy of the systems, how the pattern dimensions favor certain crystallographic orientations while penalizing the others. We found that a small free-energy difference is sufficient to drive the nucleation and growth of blue phases into a certain lattice orientation. Therefore, a processing window for obtaining arbitrary large blue-phase single crystals with predesigned lattice orientation, highly aligned reflective peaks, and significantly short forming time is provided here, which is essential for manufacturing and modulating optical devices and photonics.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available