Issue 16, 2012

Stabilising liquid crystalline Blue Phases

Abstract

Liquid crystalline Blue Phases have recently encouraged a large interest in soft matter materials development, due to their possible application in faster and easier to produce displays. One of the principal difficulties of exploiting Blue Phases in general is the fact that they are frustrated phases, normally only occurring in small temperature regimes, well above room-temperature. We present a variety of mechanisms to stabilize Blue Phases, and discuss their physical mechanisms and effectiveness. This covers conventional methods such as chiral doping, bent-core doping, polymer stabilization, all the way to nano-particle doping, nanotube dispersions, and combinations of all of the above. It appears that the stabilization mechanism is very sensitive to the applied conditions, thus optimization is an important factor. We observed the best results for hybrid systems with (i) polymer stabilized bent core doped Blue Phases, and (ii) nanoparticle plus bent core doped Blue Phases.

Graphical abstract: Stabilising liquid crystalline Blue Phases

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
11 Nov 2011
Accepted
23 Jan 2012
First published
01 Mar 2012

Soft Matter, 2012,8, 4355-4362

Stabilising liquid crystalline Blue Phases

I. Dierking, W. Blenkhorn, E. Credland, W. Drake, R. Kociuruba, B. Kayser and T. Michael, Soft Matter, 2012, 8, 4355 DOI: 10.1039/C2SM07155J

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements