Issue 38, 2015

Orientation, interaction and laser assisted self-assembly of organic single-crystal micro-sheets in a nematic liquid crystal

Abstract

Colloidal self-assembly has been one of the major driving themes in material science to obtain functional and advanced optical materials with complex architecture. Most of the nematic colloids reported so far are based on the optically isotropic spherical microparticles. We study organic single crystal micro-sheets and investigate their orientation, interaction and directed assembly in a nematic liquid crystal. The micro-sheets induce planar surface anchoring of the liquid crystal. The elasticity mediated pair interaction of micro-sheets shows quadrupolar characteristics. The average orientation angle of the micro-sheets in a planar cell and the angle between two micro-sheets in a homeotropic cell are supported by the Landau-de Gennes Q-tensor modeling. The self-assembly of the micro-sheets is assisted by a laser tweezer to form larger two-dimensional structures which have the potential for application of colloids in photonics.

Graphical abstract: Orientation, interaction and laser assisted self-assembly of organic single-crystal micro-sheets in a nematic liquid crystal

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 Aug 2015
Accepted
13 Aug 2015
First published
13 Aug 2015

Soft Matter, 2015,11, 7674-7679

Author version available

Orientation, interaction and laser assisted self-assembly of organic single-crystal micro-sheets in a nematic liquid crystal

M. V. Rasna, K. P. Zuhail, U. V. Ramudu, R. Chandrasekar, J. Dontabhaktuni and S. Dhara, Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 7674 DOI: 10.1039/C5SM01991E

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