IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v9y2018i1d10.1038_s41467-018-06975-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Synthesis and assembly of colloidal cuboids with tunable shape biaxiality

Author

Listed:
  • Yang Yang

    (University of Maryland
    Jilin University)

  • Guangdong Chen

    (University of Maryland)

  • Srinivas Thanneeru

    (University of Connecticut)

  • Jie He

    (University of Connecticut)

  • Kun Liu

    (Jilin University)

  • Zhihong Nie

    (University of Maryland)

Abstract

The design and assembly of monodisperse colloidal particles not only advances the development of functional materials, but also provides colloidal model systems for understanding phase behaviors of molecules. This communication describes the gram-scale synthesis of highly uniform colloidal cuboids with tunable dimension and shape biaxiality and their molecular mesogen-like assembly into various mesophasic structures in pristine purity. The synthesis relies on the nanoemulsion-guided generation of ammonium sulfate crystals that template the subsequent silica coating. The shape of the cuboidal particles can be tuned from square platelike, to biaxial boardlike, and to rodlike by independently controlling the length, width and thickness of the particles. We demonstrated the assembly of the cuboidal colloids into highly pure mesoscopic liquid crystal phases, including smectic A, biaxial smectic A, crystal B, discotic, and columnar phases, as well as established a correlation between mesophasic formation and colloidal biaxiality in experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Yang Yang & Guangdong Chen & Srinivas Thanneeru & Jie He & Kun Liu & Zhihong Nie, 2018. "Synthesis and assembly of colloidal cuboids with tunable shape biaxiality," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-8, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-06975-8
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06975-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06975-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-018-06975-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xinyu Wang & Jinghua Jiang & Juan Chen & Zhawure Asilehan & Wentao Tang & Chenhui Peng & Rui Zhang, 2024. "Moiré effect enables versatile design of topological defects in nematic liquid crystals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, December.
    2. Guangdong Chen & Hanwen Pei & Xuefei Zhang & Wei Shi & Mingjie Liu & Charl F. J. Faul & Bai Yang & Yan Zhao & Kun Liu & Zhongyuan Lu & Zhihong Nie & Yang Yang, 2022. "Liquid-crystalline behavior on dumbbell-shaped colloids and the observation of chiral blue phases," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-8, December.
    3. Ramakrishna Kotni & Albert Grau-Carbonell & Massimiliano Chiappini & Marjolein Dijkstra & Alfons Blaaderen, 2022. "Splay-bend nematic phases of bent colloidal silica rods induced by polydispersity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-06975-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.