Abstract
Liquid crystals have found wide applications in many fields ranging from detergents to information displays and they are also increasingly being used in the ‘bottom-up' self-assembly approach of material nano-structuration. Moreover, liquid-crystalline organizations are frequently observed by biologists. Here we show that one of the four major lyotropic liquid-crystal phases, the columnar one, is much more stable on dilution than reported so far in literature. Indeed, aqueous suspensions of imogolite nanotubes, at low ionic strength, display the columnar liquid-crystal phase at volume fractions as low as ∼0.2%. Consequently, due to its low visco-elasticity, this columnar phase is easily aligned in an alternating current electric field, in contrast with usual columnar liquid-crystal phases. These findings should have important implications for the statistical physics of the suspensions of charged rods and could also be exploited in materials science to prepare ordered nanocomposites and in biophysics to better understand solutions of rod-like biopolymers.
Highlights
Liquid crystals have found wide applications in many fields ranging from detergents to information displays and they are increasingly being used in the ‘bottom-up’ self-assembly approach of material nano-structuration
Imogolite nanotubes (INTs) which were first discovered in soils formed from volcanic ash are the aluminosilicate counterparts of carbon nanotubes (CNT)[12,13]
The columnar phases of rod-like particles (DNA, viruses, polypeptides, polysaccharides, metallic or mineral nanoparticles...) reported so far occur at volume fractions of B10–50% and the lattice spacing is close to the rod diameter
Summary
Liquid crystals have found wide applications in many fields ranging from detergents to information displays and they are increasingly being used in the ‘bottom-up’ self-assembly approach of material nano-structuration. Due to its low visco-elasticity, this columnar phase is aligned in an alternating current electric field, in contrast with usual columnar liquid-crystal phases These findings should have important implications for the statistical physics of the suspensions of charged rods and could be exploited in materials science to prepare ordered nanocomposites and in biophysics to better understand solutions of rod-like biopolymers. Lyotropic liquid crystals are obtained when rod-like objects (stiff polymers, detergent micelles, nanoparticles) are dispersed in a solvent According to their symmetries, liquid-crystalline phases belong to four main classes: nematic, lamellar, columnar and cubic[1]. The stability domain of the columnar phase extends to much lower concentrations than previously inferred[17,18,19] This dilute phase has low visco-elasticity and can be aligned in an electric field, unlike other lyotropic columnar mesophases
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