Smectic Layer Origami via Preprogrammed Photoalignment

Ma, Lingling; Tang, Ming; Hu, Wei; Cui, Zequn; Ge, Shi‐Jun; Chen, Peng; Chen, Lujian; Qian, Hao; Chi, Lifeng; Lu, Yan‐qing

doi:10.1002/adma.201606671

Cited by 50 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Ok et al [44] reported the multi-rubbing induced spatial arrangement of TFCDs, which was enabled by a tendency to maintain organization in the N phase once transitioned to the SmA phase. Sharing the function of guiding molecular orientation with the rubbing method, a photo-alignment technique has become popular [45][46][47][48][49]. It can overcome the drawbacks of the rubbing, including the mechanical damage and electrostatic charges.…”

Section: Rubbingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Stimuli on Liquid Crystalline Defects: From Defect Engineering to Switchable Functional Materials

Shin

Yoon

2020

Materials

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Achieving tunable physical properties is currently one of the most exciting research topics. In order to realize this goal, a medium that is responsive to external stimuli and can undergo a change in its physical property is required. Liquid crystal (LC) is a prominent candidate, as its physical and optical properties can be easily manipulated with various stimuli, such as surface anchoring, rubbing, geometric confinement, and external fields. Having broken away from the past devotion to obtaining a uniform domain of LCs, people are now putting significant efforts toward forming and manipulating ordered and oriented defect structures with a unique arrangement within. The complicated molecular order with tunability would benefit the interdisciplinary research fields of optics, physics, photonics, and materials science. In this review, the recent progress toward defect engineering in the nematic and smectic phases by controlling the surface environment and electric field and their combinational methods is introduced. We close the review with a discussion of the possible applications enabled using LC defect structures as switchable materials.

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Section: Rubbingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Stimuli on Liquid Crystalline Defects: From Defect Engineering to Switchable Functional Materials

Shin

Yoon

2020

Materials

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Section: Light‐activated Liquid Crystalline Hierarchical Architecturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To avoid the above problems, a dynamic light‐activated photoalignment technique was adopted to control the 3D smectic layer curvature . Figure C‐I schematically shows a digital mirror device‐based photopatterning system, which can easily accomplish arbitrary planar anchoring patterns.…”

Section: Light‐activated Liquid Crystalline Hierarchical Architecturesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light‐Activated Liquid Crystalline Hierarchical Architecture Toward Photonics

Zheng

et al. 2019

Advanced Optical Materials

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remarkable structure results in a helical-variant dielectric tensor, thus contributing to a natural 1D photonic crystal. [7] It is endowed with a broadband Bragg reflection with a unique circular-polarization selectivity. Blue phase (BP) is another fantastic phase with 3D stacked lattice ( Figure 1D). [8] Such an elegant state-of-matter is energetically preferred in a high chirality system, commonly existing in a narrow temperature range of less than 1 K, between the cholesteric and isotropic phases. It has an exotic arrangement characteristic of LCs, which twists around two helical axes forming cylinders including hierarchically twisted molecular architectures. Such double twisted cylinders are impossible to tile the whole 3D space, which leads to inevitable disclinations and results in frustrated structures.Self-organization is an intrinsic ability of LC molecules. However, the precise control and generation of large-area desirable hierarchical superstructures require state-of-the-art techniques that usually combine the "top-down" microfabrication with the "bottom-up" self-assembly. Here, we review various hierarchical architectures in SLCs, CLCs, and BPLCs, especially recent progresses in light-activated LC hierarchical superstructures, as well as their optics and photonics applications in optics and photonics. In this review, we will see the controllable spatial smectic layer curving via 2D anchoring confinement, 3D topographic confinement, and external field guidance, with which the domain size, shape, orientation, and lattice symmetry of focal conic domain (FCD) arrays are well manipulated. The control of helix direction or fluctuation of CLC layers and the growth of unique fingerprint textures including spiral and wave-like continuous gratings are presented. The 3D manipulation of BPLC hierarchical architecture is accomplished photoalignment and various light-driven azobenzene molecular motors. The construction of these unique hierarchical superstructures brings new opportunities to the design of novel optic and photonic devices. Corresponding applications, including traditional microlens array, beam steering, and more advanced specific optical field generation and LC lasers are comprehensively reviewed as well.

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“…However, these methods are often complicated and limited to producing gratings with a fixed grating constant. Liquid crystal (LC), a typical soft building block, has the ability to self-assemble into various hierarchical superstructures [5][6][7]. Thanks to the high responsiveness to diverse external stimuli, LC gratings have played important roles in tunable optical components for light manipulation [8][9][10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Light-Driven Pitch Tuning of Self-Assembled Hierarchical Gratings

Liu

et al. 2021

Crystals

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Gratings are of vital importance in modern optics. Self-assembled cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) gratings have attracted intensive attention due to their easy fabrication and broad applications. However, simultaneously achieving arbitrary patterning and delicate tuning of CLC gratings remains elusive. Here, light-driven pitch tuning is accomplished in hierarchical gratings formed in a molecular switch doped CLC. We fabricate a checkerboard hierarchical CLC grating for a demonstration, whose pitch is optically tuned from 4.6 µm to 10.7 µm. Correspondingly, the first-order diffraction angle continuously changes from 9.4° to 4.8° and a significant polarization selectivity is also observed. In addition, hierarchical CLC gratings with triangular wave pattern, Archimedean spiral, and radial stripes are also demonstrated. This work creates new opportunities for soft-matter-based intelligent functional materials and advanced photonic devices.

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Smectic Layer Origami via Preprogrammed Photoalignment

Cited by 50 publications

References 53 publications

Role of Stimuli on Liquid Crystalline Defects: From Defect Engineering to Switchable Functional Materials

Role of Stimuli on Liquid Crystalline Defects: From Defect Engineering to Switchable Functional Materials

Light‐Activated Liquid Crystalline Hierarchical Architecture Toward Photonics

Light-Driven Pitch Tuning of Self-Assembled Hierarchical Gratings

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