PEG-nanotube liquid crystals as templates for construction of surfactant-free gold nanorods.

Chem Commun (Camb)

Nanomaterials Research Institute, Department of Materials and Chemistry, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba Central 5, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan.

Published: May 2018

Lyotropic liquid crystals, in which nanotubes coated with polyethylene glycol were aligned side-by-side in aqueous dispersions, acted as templates for the construction of surfactant-free gold nanorods with controllable diameters, functionalizable surfaces, and tunable optical properties.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c8cc02013bDOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

liquid crystals
8
templates construction
8
construction surfactant-free
8
surfactant-free gold
8
gold nanorods
8
peg-nanotube liquid
4
crystals templates
4
nanorods lyotropic
4
lyotropic liquid
4
crystals nanotubes
4

Similar Publications

In the field of chiral smectic liquid crystals, orthoconic antiferroelectric liquid crystals (OAFLCs) have attracted the interest of the scientific community due to the very high tilt angle, close to 45°, and the consequent optical properties. In the present study, the first H NMR investigation is reported on two samples, namely 3F5HPhF9 and 3F7HPhF8, showing the phase sequence isotropic-SmC*-SmC* and the phase sequence isotropic-SmA-SmC*-SmC*, respectively, when cooling from the isotropic to the crystalline phases. To this aim, the liquid crystals were doped with a small amount of deuterated probe biphenyl-4,4'-diol-d.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We provide the first direct experimental evidence for the reorientation of liquid crystals by polarized radiation from a conventional, low power, oscillator-based terahertz time-domain spectrometer. Using a terahertz pump - optical probe setup, we observed that the reorientation occurs locally through the resonant amplification of the terahertz field in a specially designed planar metamaterial, adjacent to the liquid crystal layer, and increases with increasing incident terahertz intensity. Our work thus demonstrates that it is possible to induce strong optical nonlinearity in liquid crystals in the terahertz part of the spectrum, paving the way toward the development of new all-optical active terahertz devices as well as electric field sensors for localized resonant systems.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study explores the influence of charge distribution and molecular shape on the stability of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases through atomistic simulations of DIO molecules. We demonstrate the role of dipole-dipole interactions and molecular shape in achieving polar ordering by simulating charged and chargeless topologies, and analysing positional and orientational pair-distribution functions. The charged DIO molecules exhibit head-to-tail and side-by-side parallel alignments conducive to long-range polar order, whereas the chargeless molecules show no polar ordering.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Liquid crystals (LCs) are widely used as promising stimuli-responsive materials due to their unique combination of liquid and crystalline properties, providing the capability to sense even molecular-scale events and amplify them into macroscopic optical outputs. However, encoding a high level of selectivity to a specific intermolecular event remains a key challenge, leading to prior studies regarding chemically functionalized LC interfaces. Herein, we propose an integrative strategy to significantly advance the design of chemo-responsive LCs through a deep fundamental understanding on the orientational coupling of LCs with new functional molecules, organic ionic plastic crystals (OIs), presented at LC interfaces.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Developing of molecular crystalline materials with light-induced multiple dynamic deformation in space dimension and photochromism on time scales has attracted much attention for its potential applications in actuators, sensoring and information storage. Nevertheless, organic crystals capable of both photoinduced dynamic effects and static color change are rare, particularly for multi-component cocrystals system. In this study, we first report the construction of charge transfer co-crystals allows their light-induced solid-to-liquid transition and photochromic behaviors to be controlled by trans-stilbene (TSB) as an electron donor and 3,4,5,6-Tetrafluorophthalonitrile (TFP) as an electron acceptor.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!