Lyotropic Liquid Crystals Incorporated with Different Kinds of Carbon Nanomaterials or Biomolecules

Abstract

Liquid crystals (LCs) are considered as the "fourth state of matter," which can display properties between crystals and isotropic liquids. LCs can be classified into lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs) and thermotropic liquid crystals (TLCs), among which LLCs are a kind of self-assemblies formed by amphiphile molecules in a given solvent within certain concentration ranges. The structures and properties of LLCs can be tuned by the incorporation of various kinds of additives, which represents an interesting and novel route for realizing functional composites. This review focuses on recent progress on LLCsbased materials assembled with diverse additives including carbon nanotubes, graphene, graphene oxide, and biomolecules. The thermal stability and mechanical strength of the host LLCs can be greatly improved after the guests are incorporated. In addition, new functions such as conductivity, photothermal effect, and bioactivity can be introduced by the incorporation of the guests, which significantly widens the applications of LLCs-based hybrids in nanotechnology, electrochemistry, drug delivery, and life science.

Development and optimization of amphiphilic self-assembly into nanostructured liquid crystals for transdermal delivery of an antidiabetic SGLT2 inhibitor

“…Generally, LLC nanostructures are formed as a result of the interaction between oil, water and amphiphile. Such structures are tunable by the addition of other types of additives (Song et al., 2017 ).…”