Dielectrophoretic manipulation of the mixture of isotropic and nematic liquid

In various applications involving liquid crystals, the manipulation of the nanoscale molecular assembly and microscale director alignment is highly useful. Here we show that a nematic–isotropic mixture, a unique bi-liquid system, has potential for the fabrication of microstructures having an ordered phase within a disordered phase, or vice versa. The volume expansion and shrinkage, migration, splitting, mergence and elongation of one phase within the other are easily accomplished via thermal treatment and dielectrophoretic manipulation. This is particularly achievable when one phase is suspended in the middle. In that case, a highly biased ordered-phase preference of surfaces, that is, the nematic-philic nature of a polyimide layer and the nematic-phobic nature of a self-assembled monolayer of chlorosilane derivatives, is used. Further, by combining this approach with photopolymerization, the patterned microstructure is solidified as a patterned polymer film having both isotropic and anisotropic molecular arrangements simultaneously, or as a template with a morphological variation.