Abstract
Liquid crystal templating is a versatile technique to create novel organic and inorganic materials with nanoscale features. It exploits the self-assembled architectures of liquid crystal phases as scaffolds. This article focuses on some of the key developments in lyotropic and thermotropic liquid crystals templating. The procedures that were employed to create templated structures and the applications of these novel materials in various fields including mesoporous membranes, organic electronics, the synthesis of nanostructured materials and photonics, are described.
Highlights
Materials with nanoscale features are attractive for a wide variety of applications
Liquid crystal templating is a substantial field of research and there has been a large volume of excellent scientific work carried out since it was first envisaged
This paper examined some key examples of liquid crystal templated structures and discussed the main concepts, considerations, methodologies and their applications
Summary
Materials with nanoscale features are attractive for a wide variety of applications. The fabrication of nanostructured materials is essential for innovative nanotechnologies. Self-assembly has emerged as a powerful bottom-up approach to control the architectures and size distributions of nanostructures Templating is another approach used in material science, which sometimes exploits self-assembled systems, where the intricate nanoscale features of a host medium are transferred into a guest matrix through a set of chemical and physical processes. Amphiphilic molecules self-assemble into spherical aggregates called micelles, which when the concentration of the amphiphile is increased in the solution, further aggregate to form hexagonal, cubic and lamellar structures (Figure 1) It is these intricate structures of both lyotropic and thermotropic liquid crystal phases at nanometre length scales that inspired scientists to use them as templates for novel nanostructured materials. Schematic representation of some of lyotropic (A) and thermotropic (B) liquid crystal phases
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