ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Self-shaping liquid crystal droplets by balancing bulk elasticity and interfacial tension.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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11 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Morphological changes in smectic liquid crystal microstructures.Soft matter · 2026Article
- Tunable Self-Emulsification Via Viscoelastic Control of Marangoni-Driven Interfacial Instabilities.Small methods · 2026Article
- Topologically reconfigurable nematic emulsions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- Dynamic photomask directed lithography based on electrically stimulated nematic liquid crystal architectures.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Morphogenesis of a chiral liquid crystalline droplet with topological reconnection and Lehmann rotation.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Topological transformations of a nematic drop.Science advances · 2023Article
- Coupling of nematic in-plane orientational ordering and equilibrium shapes of closed flexible nematic shells.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Shaping Liquid Droplets on an Active Air-Ferrofluid Interface.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2023Article
- Article
- Emulsion Gels as Precursors for Porous Silicones and All-Polymer Composites-A Proof of Concept Based on Siloxane Stabilizers.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The shape diversity and controlled reconfigurability of closed surfaces and filamentous structures, universally found in cellular colonies and living tissues, are challenging to reproduce. Here, we demonstrate a method for the self-shaping of liquid crystal (LC) droplets into anisotropic and three-dimensional superstructures, such as LC fibers, LC helices, and differently shaped LC vesicles. The method is based on two surfactants: one dissolved in the LC dispersed phase and the other in the aqueous continuous phase. We use thermal stimuli to tune the bulk LC elasticity and interfacial energy, thereby transforming an emulsion of polydispersed, spherical nematic droplets into numerous, uniform-diameter fibers with multiple branches and vice versa. Furthermore, when the nematic LC is cooled to the smectic-A LC phase, we produce monodispersed microdroplets with a tunable diameter dictated by the cooling rate. Utilizing this temperature-controlled self-shaping of LCs, we demonstrate life-like smectic LC vesicle structures analogous to the biomembranes in living systems. Our experimental findings are supported by a theoretical model of equilibrium interface shapes. The shape transformation is induced by negative interfacial energy, which promotes a spontaneous increase of the interfacial area at a fixed LC volume. The method was successfully applied to many different LC materials and phases, demonstrating a universal mechanism for shape transformation in complex fluids.
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