Liquid Crystal Materials for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Liquid crystal is a state of matter being intermediate between solid and liquid. Liquid crystal materials exhibit both orientational order and fluidity. While liquid crystals have long been highly recognized in the display industry, in recent decades, liquid crystals provide new opportunities into the cross‐field of material science and biomedicine due to their biocompatibility, multifunctionality, and responsiveness. In this review, the latest achievements of liquid crystal materials applied in biomedical fields are summarized. The start is made by introducing the basic concepts of liquid crystals, and then shifting to the components of liquid crystals as well as functional materials derived therefrom. After that, the ongoing and foreseeable applications of liquid crystal materials in the biomedical field with emphasis put on several cutting‐edge aspects, including drug delivery, bioimaging, tissue engineering, implantable devices, biosensing, and wearable devices are discussed. It is hoped that this review will stimulate ingenious ideas for the future generation of liquid crystal‐based drug development, artificial implants, disease diagnosis, health status monitoring, and beyond.

Aquatic Functional Liquid Crystals: Design, Functionalization, and Molecular Simulation

“…In the last two decades, new stimuli‐responsive aquatic LC materials have been developed based on ordering transitions of thermotropic liquid crystals at the aqueous interfaces ( Figure ). [ 3,5,9,39 ] In particular, the dynamic aqueous/LC interfaces have great potential for label‐free detection of target chemical and biological species in water because they exhibit distinct changes in optical appearance. [ 9 ] In this section, we describe the recent progress in the design, applications, and molecular simulations of the aqueous/LC interfaces as sensing platforms.…”

Effect of Carbon dots in tuning molecular alignment, dielectric and electrical properties of a smectogenic cyanobiphenyl-based liquid crystal material

“…The ability of the LC to showcase fascinating yet tailorable ordered superstructures that are highly sensitive to external stimuli makes it an unfailing paradigm in the display industry [5]. It is worth pointing out here that the application of LCs is not just limited to display industries [6][7][8][9] since its ease of forming varied material structures makes them ideal for biosensing [10], drug delivery [11], microlensing [12,13], tuneable lasers [14], photonic crystals [15], vortex beam generators [16], etc. However, certain limitations, such as the lack of gray-scale capability, low contrast ratio, narrow viewing angle, lower light efficiency, requirement of backlight sources, high-power consumption, etc [17,18] have often remained as a bottleneck that researchers time and again have attempted to resolve utilizing a variety of techniques.…”

A Computational Study of the Intermolecular Interactions in the Head-To-Tail Arrangement of the 5CB Liquid Crystal Monomers

“…[1][2][3] In function of their properties, these LCs are being constantly developed, modified, and used industrially in displays, thermometers, light valves, cosmetics, lubricants, ultra-resistant fibers (liquid crystal polymers), films, drugs, and medicines. [4,5] Probably the most commercially important class of LCs to date is 4-alkyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (CB), because it is used to fabricate displays in calculators, mobile phones, and portable computers. [4,6] 4-n-pentyl-4-cyano-biphenyl (5CB) is one of the LCs most studied because it shows a nematic phase between 297 and 308.3 K. This property allows it to be used in many applications at room temperature.…”