Recent Advances in Liquid Crystal Nanomaterials
A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Soft Matter".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 July 2023) | Viewed by 151
Special Issue Editor
Interests: magnetic fluids; magnetic nanoparticles; colloids; liquid crystal composites; magnetic properties; phase transitions; infrared spectroscopy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Self-assembling organic materials that exhibit liquid crystalline behavior represent soft matter with unique properties. They are extremely promising anisotropic media for the design of nanocomposite systems. The main motivation for introducing nanoparticles into liquid crystalline matrices is usually to improve their optical and electro-optical or magneto-optical properties, as well as to create new materials. The dispersion of guest particles in a liquid crystalline medium has been an active area of research for four decades. There has also been a continuously growing interest in this area of research over the last 10 years, and a number of interesting phenomena have been demonstrated. Composite systems—liquid crystals (LCs) doped with different nanoparticles, such as gold, or semiconducting, ferroelectric, magnetic, or carbon nanotubes—have been subjected to intensive research in an effort to produce materials with unique properties, as well as to increase the sensitivity of these materials to external fields. Significant efforts have been made to study and explore the orientation of the particles in these systems. Several approaches have been devised for the generation of new functional materials. Promising new directions include LCs for organic electronics; semiconductor devices; energy conversion; LC templating to create nanostructured materials; synthesizing nanoparticles in liquid crystalline templates or ordering nano- and microparticles; liquid crystal colloids and their potential in photonics and metamaterials; liquid crystal-functionalized polymer fibers; LC elastomer actuators; and drug delivery applications. The interaction between the nanoparticles and self-assembling media strongly depends on the specific combination of the physical properties of both components, thus depending on the molecular structure and elastic properties of LCs, as well as on the type, size, and shape of the nanoparticles used as a dopant.
This Special Issue is a timely approach to survey the recent progress in the field of liquid crystal-based nanomaterials and their applications. As such, this Special Issue offers a unique insight into what has been achieved and what remains to be explored in liquid crystal nanomaterials.
Dr. Natália Tomašovičová
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- hybrid and nanostructured LC systems
- biological, lyotropic, and chromonic LC systems
- nanoparticle-doped LCs
- LC polymers, elastomers, colloids, and gels
- soft nanotechnology and self-assembly
- orientational ordering and defects
- magnetic, electric, and optical properties
- phase transitions
- theory, modeling, and simulation
- other subjects related to LC nanomaterials
