Dispersing swimming microalgae in self-assembled nanocellulose suspension: Unveiling living colloid dynamics in cholesteric liquid crystals

Chu, Guang; Sohrabi, Fereshteh; Timonen, Jaakko V. I.; Rojas, Orlando J.

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.05.012

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The local disorders and defects are commonly observed in chiral nematic CNC structures. 104,119 As shown in Figure 4, tactoid fusion, boundary anchoring effect, 113,137 flow shear effect, 115,140 and coffee-ring effect 94 all contributed to local disorders and defects in both liquid and solid chiral nematic structures. For instance, misaligned multidomain chiral nematic CNC structures are formed when CNCs are deposited onto a substrate with a surface that is not perfectly aligned with the director of the CNCs.…”

Section: Chirality Of Cnc Particles and Cnc Aggregatesmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Accelerating Cellulose Nanocrystal Assembly into Chiral Nanostructures

et al. 2023

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Cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) suspensions self-assembled into chiral nematic liquid crystals. This property has enabled the development of versatile optical materials with fascinating properties. Nevertheless, the scale-up production and commercial success of chiral nematic CNC superstructures face significant challenges. Fabrication of chiral nematic CNC nanostructures suffers from a ubiquitous pernicious trade-off between uniform chiral nematic structure and rapid self-assembly. Specifically, the chiral nematic assembly of CNCs is a time-consuming, spontaneous process that involves the organization of particles into ordered nanostructures as the solvent evaporates. This review is driven by the interest in accelerating chiral nematic CNC assembly and promoting a long-range oriented chiral nematic CNC superstructure. To start this review, the chirality origins of CNC and CNC aggregates are analyzed. This is followed by a summary of the recent advances in stimuli-accelerated chiral nematic CNC self-assembly procedures, including evaporation-induced self-assembly, continuous coating, vacuum-assisted self-assembly, and shear-induced CNC assembly under confinement. In particular, stimuli-induced unwinding, alignment, and relaxation of chiral nematic structures were highlighted, offering a significant link between the accelerated assembly approaches and uniform chiral nematic nanostructures. Ultimately, future opportunities and challenges for rapid chiral nematic CNC assembly are discussed for more innovative and exciting applications.

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Section: Chirality Of Cnc Particles and Cnc Aggregatesmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Chirality Of Cnc Particles and Cnc Aggregatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accelerating Cellulose Nanocrystal Assembly into Chiral Nanostructures

et al. 2023

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“…Confining anisotropic LC fluid into an emulsion system is widely explored as a LC emulsion and displays distinctive nano- and microstructures. − When the prepared LC emulsion shows microscale droplet morphology, the LC orientational order can be frustrated in confined spherical geometries by the interplay between boundary conditions and energy minimization, yielding complex behaviors to control microscale colloidal self-assembly with super structures that are distinguished from the bulk phase. − Interestingly, some colloidal particles can self-align along a common axis at high concentrations, resulting in the anisotropic LC phase with long-range ordered particle assembly. For example, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are charged, rod-like nanoparticles that can self-assemble into a cholesteric LC phase above the critical concentration. − The cholesteric organized CNC suspension is extremely stable with the presence of polymers, micro-/nanoparticles, and surfactants and can be further solidified into photonic films upon slow solvent evaporation. − Several studies have shown that CNCs could be used as a robust LC building block for designing custom-tailored functional materials in the dry state; − in contrast, few works have focused on the CNC colloidal self-assembly as LC emulsions. Owing to the nanoparticle stabilizing effect at the liquid–liquid interface, the aqueous CNC cholesteric phase can be confined directly within the suspended droplet (water-in-oil), in the inverted continuous phase (oil-in-water), or both phases (water-in-water), generating a immiscible LC-fluid interface with hierarchically ordered structures.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

All-Aqueous Bicontinuous Structured Liquid Crystal Emulsion through Intraphase Trapping of Cellulose Nanoparticles

et al. 2022

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Here, we describe the all-aqueous bicontinuous emulsions with cholesteric liquid crystal domains through hierarchical colloidal self-assembly of nanoparticles. This is achieved by homogenization of a rod-like cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) with two immiscible, phase separating polyethylene glycol (PEG) and dextran polymer solutions. The dispersed CNCs exhibit unequal affinity for the binary polymer mixtures that depends on the balance of osmotic and chemical potential between the two phases. Once at the critical concentration, CNC particles are constrained within one component of the polymer phases and self-assemble into a cholesteric organization. The obtained liquid crystal emulsion demonstrates a confined three-dimensional percolating bicontinuous network with cholesteric self-assembly of CNC within the PEG phase; meanwhile, the nanoparticles in the dextran phase remain isotropic instead. Our results provide an alternative way to arrest bicontinuous structures through intraphase trapping and assembling of nanoparticles, which is a viable and flexible route to extend for a wide range of colloidal systems.

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