Issue 39, 2020

Engineered liquid crystal nano droplets: insights from multi-scale simulations

Abstract

Liquid crystal (LC) droplets have been investigated for a wide range of applications, from displays to sensors. Over the years, a need has arisen for complete understanding of the behaviour of LCs in droplets under different conditions for the development of advanced devices, for which accurate modelling is necessary. We show here, for the first time, both qualitative and quantitative agreement between coarse-grained molecular models and Q-tensor theory calculations for liquid crystal (LC) droplets. The approach is demonstrated for two types of droplet surfaces, which possess strong planar degenerate and strong homeotropic anchoring, respectively. Once its reliability has been proven, our approach was used to identify defects due to changes in anchoring in a small region on the LC droplet surface, which could be triggered, for example, by the adsorption of a nano-particle or a protein. Both coarse-grained simulations and Q-tensor analysis show the appearance of defects in well-determined locations within the LC droplet, albeit sometimes affected by degeneracy due to the symmetry of the systems being investigated. These results suggest the possibility of using LC droplets, in the future, as platforms for advanced sensing as well as for signal intensification.

Graphical abstract: Engineered liquid crystal nano droplets: insights from multi-scale simulations

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
02 Jūl. 2020
Accepted
29 Sept. 2020
First published
29 Sept. 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale, 2020,12, 20211-20219

Engineered liquid crystal nano droplets: insights from multi-scale simulations

Z. Sumer, F. A. Fernandez and A. Striolo, Nanoscale, 2020, 12, 20211 DOI: 10.1039/D0NR04989A

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