arXiv subjects

Qingkun Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Qingkun Liu.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Aerogel from sustainably grown bacterial cellulose pellicle as thermally insulative film for building envelope

Improving building energy performance requires the development of new highly insulative materials. An affordable retrofitting solution comprising a thin film could improve the resistance to heat flow in both residential and commercial buildings and reduce overall energy consumption. Here we propose cellulose aerogel films formed from pellicles produced by the bacteria Gluconacetobacter hansenii as insulation materials. We studied the impact of density and nanostructure on the aerogels' thermal properties. Thermal conductivity as low as 13 mW/(K*m) was measured for native pellicle-based aerogels dried as-is with minimal post-treatment. The use of waste from the beer brewing industry as a solution to grow the pellicle maintained the cellulose yield obtained with standard Hestrin-Schramm medium, making our product more affordable and sustainable. In the future, our work can be extended through further diversification of the sources of substrate among food wastes, facilitating larger potential production and applications.

physics.app-ph↗

arXiv2022

Cellulose-Based Reflective Liquid Crystal Films as Optical Filters and Solar Gain Regulators

Many promising approaches for designing interactions of synthetic materials with light involve solid optical monocrystals and nanofabricated photonic crystal structures with spatially periodic variations of refractive index. Although their high costs limit current technological applications, remarkably, such photonic and optically anisotropic materials have also evolved throughout nature and enable narrow or broad-band spectral reflection of light. Here we use self-assembly of biomaterial cellulose nanocrystals to obtain three-layer films with helicoidal and nematic-like organization of the cellulose nanoparticles, which mimics naturally occurring polarization-insensitive reflectors found in the wings of Plusiotis resplendens beetles. These films were characterized with polarized optical microscopy and circular dichroism spectrometry, as well as scanning and transmission electron microscopies. These films exhibit high reflectivity tunable within the visible and near-infrared regions of the optical spectrum and may find applications ranging from color filters to smart cloth designs and in solar-gain-regulating building technologies.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Self-assembled nematic colloidal motors powered by light

Biological motors are marvels of nature that inspire creation of their synthetic counterparts with comparable nanoscale dimensions, high efficiency and diverse functions. Molecular motors have been synthesized, but obtaining nanomotors through self-assembly remains challenging. Here we describe a self-assembled colloidal motor with a repetitive light-driven rotation of transparent micro-particles immersed in a liquid crystal and powered by a continuous exposure to unstructured ~1 nW light. A monolayer of azobenzene molecules defines how the liquid crystal's optical axis mechanically couples to the particle's surface, as well as how they jointly rotate as the light's polarization changes. The rotating particle twists the liquid crystal, which changes polarization of traversing light. The resulting feedback mechanism yields a continuous opto-mechanical cycle and drives the unidirectional particle spinning, with handedness and frequency robustly controlled by polarization and intensity of light. Our findings may lead to opto-mechanical devices and colloidal machines compatible with liquid crystal display technology.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2020

Elastic colloidal monopoles and reconfigurable self-assembly in liquid crystals

Monopole-like electrostatic interactions are ubiquitous in biology and condensed matter, but they are often screened by counter-ions and cannot be switched from attractive to repulsive. In colloidal science, where the prime goal is to develop colloidal particles that mimic and exceed the diversity and length-scales of atomic and molecular assembly, electrostatically charged particles cannot change the sign of their surface charge or transform from monopoles to higher-order multipoles. In liquid-crystal colloids, elastic interactions between particles arise to minimize the free energy associated with elastic distortions in the long-range alignment of rod-like molecules around the particles. In dipolar, quadrupolar and hexadecapolar nematic colloids, the symmetries of such elastic distortions mimic both electrostatic multipoles and the outmost occupied electron shells of atoms. Electric and magnetic switching, spontaneous transformations and optical control of elastic multipoles, as well as their interactions with topological defects and surface boundary conditions, have been demonstrated in such colloids. However, it has long been understood that elastic monopoles should relax to uniform or higher-order multipole states because of the elastic torques that they induce. Here we develop nematic colloids with strong elastic monopole moments and with elastic torques balanced by optical torques exerted by ambient light. We demonstrate the monopole-to-quadrupole reconfiguration of these colloidal particles by unstructured light, which resembles the driving of atoms between the ground state and various excited states. We show that the sign of the elastic monopoles can be switched, and that like-charged monopoles attract whereas oppositely charged ones repel, unlike in electrostatics. We also demonstrate the out-of-equilibrium dynamic assembly of these colloidal particles.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2018

Liquid crystalline cellulose-based nematogels

Physical properties of composite materials can be pre-engineered by controlling their structure and composition at the mesoscale. Yet, approaches for achieving this are limited and rarely scalable. We introduce a new breed of self-assembled nematogels formed by an orientationally ordered network of thin cellulose nanofibers infiltrated with a thermotropic nematic fluid. The interplay of orientational ordering within the nematic network and that of the small-molecule liquid crystal around it yields a composite with highly tunable optical properties. By means of combining experimental characterization and modeling, we demonstrate sub-millisecond electric switching of transparency and facile responses of the composite to temperature changes. Finally, we discuss a host of potential technological uses of these self-assembled nematogel composites, ranging from smart and privacy windows to novel flexible displays.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Liquid crystal self-assembly of upconversion nanorods enriched by depletion forces for mesostructured material preparation

Monodisperse rod-like colloidal particles are known for spontaneously forming both nematic and smectic liquid crystal phases, but their self-assembly was typically exploited from the fundamental soft condensed matter physics perspective. Here we demonstrate that depletion interactions, driven by non-adsorbing polymers like dextran and surfactants, can be used to enrich self-organization of photon-upconversion nanorods into orientationally ordered nematic and smectic-like membrane colloidal superstructures. We study thermodynamic phase diagrams and demonstrate polarization-dependent photon upconversion exhibited by the ensuing composites, which arises from the superposition of unique properties of the solid nanostructures and the long-range ordering enabled by liquid crystalline self-organization. Finally, we discuss how our method of utilizing self-assembly due to the steric and electrostatic interactions, along with attractive depletion forces, can enable technological uses of lyotropic colloidal liquid crystals and mesostructured composite materials enabled by them, even when they are formed by anisotropic nanoparticles with relatively small aspect ratios.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Repulsion-attraction switching of nematic colloids formed by liquid crystal dispersions of polygonal prisms

Self-assembly of colloidal particles due to elastic interactions in nematic liquid crystals promises tunable composite materials and can be guided by exploiting surface functionalization, geometric shape and topology, though these means of controlling self-assembly remain limited. Here, we realize low-symmetry achiral and chiral elastic colloids in the nematic liquid crystals using colloidal polygonal concave and convex prisms. We show that the controlled pinning of disclinations at the prisms edges alters the symmetry of director distortions around the prisms and their orientation with respect to the far-field director. The controlled localization of the disclinations at the prism's edges significantly influences anisotropy of the diffusion properties of prisms dispersed in liquid crystals and allows one to modify their self-assembly. We show that elastic interactions between polygonal prisms can be switched between repulsive and attractive just by controlled re-pinning the disclinations at different edges using laser tweezers. Our findings demonstrate that elastic interactions between colloidal particles dispersed in nematic liquid crystals are sensitive to the topologically equivalent but geometrically rich controlled configurations of the particle-induced defects.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Electric Switching of Fluorescence Decay in Gold-Silica-Dye Nematic Nanocolloids Mediated by Surface Plasmons

Tunable composite materials with interesting physical behavior can be designed through integrating unique optical properties of solid nanostructures with the facile responses of soft matter to weak external stimuli, but this approach remains challenged by their poorly controlled co-assembly at the mesoscale. Using scalable wet chemical synthesis procedures, we fabricated anisotropic gold-silica-dye colloidal nanostructures and then organized them into the device-scale (demonstrated for square inch cells) electrically tunable composites by simultaneously invoking molecular and colloidal self-assembly. We show that the ensuing ordered colloidal dispersions of shape-anisotropic nanostructures exhibit tunable fluorescence decay rates and intensity. We characterize how these properties depend on low-voltage fields and polarization of both the excitation and emission light, demonstrating a great potential for the practical realization of an interesting breed of nanostructured composite materials.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2017

Optical patterning of magnetic domains and defects in ferromagnetic liquid crystal colloids

A promising approach in designing composite materials with unusual physical behavior combines solid nanostructures and orientationally ordered soft matter at the mesoscale. Such composites not only inherit properties of their constituents but also can exhibit emergent behavior, such as ferromagnetic ordering of colloidal metal nanoparticles forming mesoscopic magnetization domains when dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal. Here we demonstrate the optical patterning of domain structures and topological defects in such ferromagnetic liquid crystal colloids, which allows for altering their response to magnetic fields. Our findings reveal the nature of the defects in this soft matter system which is different as compared to non-polar nematics and ferromagnets alike.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Topological colloids

Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because naturally occurring colloids have a shape that is typically determined by minimization of interfacial tension (for example, during phase separation) or faceted crystal growth, their surfaces tend to have minimum-area spherical or topologically equivalent shapes such as prisms and irregular grains (all continuously deformable - homeomorphic - to spheres). Although toroidal DNA condensates and vesicles with different numbers of handles can exist and soft matter defects can be shaped as rings and knots, the role of particle topology in colloidal systems remains unexplored. Here we fabricate and study colloidal particles with different numbers of handles and genus g ranging from 1 to 5. When introduced into a nematic liquid crystal - a fluid made of rod-like molecules that spontaneously align along the so-called "director" - these particles induce three-dimensional director fields and topological defects dictated by colloidal topology. Whereas electric fields, photothermal melting and laser tweezing cause transformations between configurations of particle-induced structures, three-dimensional nonlinear optical imaging reveals that topological charge is conserved and that the total charge of particle-induced defects always obeys predictions of the Gauss-Bonnet and Poincare-Hopf index theorems. This allows us to establish and experimentally test the procedure for assignment and summation of topological charges in three-dimensional director fields. Our findings lay the groundwork for new applications of colloids and liquid crystals that range from topological memory devices, through new types of self-assembly, to the experimental study of low-dimensional topology.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Nematic liquid crystal boojums with handles on colloidal handlebodies

Topological defects that form on surfaces of ordered media, dubbed boojums, are ubiquitous in superfluids, liquid crystals (LCs), Langmuir monolayers, and Bose-Einstein condensates. They determine supercurrents in superfluids, impinge on electrooptical switching in polymer-dispersed LCs, and mediate chemical response at nematic-isotropic fluid interfaces, but the role of surface topology in the appearance, stability, and core structure of these defects remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate robust generation of boojums by controlling surface topology of colloidal particles that impose tangential boundary conditions for the alignment of LC molecules. To do this, we design handlebody-shaped polymer particles with different genus g. When introduced into a nematic LC, these particles distort the nematic molecular alignment field while obeying topological constraints and induce at least 2g - 2 boojums that allow for topological charge conservation. We characterize 3D textures of boojums using polarized nonlinear optical imaging of molecular alignment and explain our findings by invoking symmetry considerations and numerical modeling of experiment-matching director fields, order parameter variations, and nontrivial handle-shaped core structure of defects. Finally, we discuss how this interplay between the topologies of colloidal surfaces and boojums may lead to controlled self-assembly of colloidal particles in nematic and paranematic hosts, which, in turn, may enable reconfigurable topological composites.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Edge pinning and transformation of defect lines induced by faceted colloidal rings in nematic liquid crystals

Nematic colloids exhibit a large diversity of topological defects and structures induced by colloidal particles in the orientationally ordered liquid crystal host fluids. These defects and field configurations define elastic interactions and medium-mediated self-assembly, as well as serve as model systems in exploiting the richness of interactions between topologies and geometries of colloidal surfaces, nematic fields, and topological singularities induced by particles in the nematic bulk and at nematic-colloidal interfaces. Here we demonstrate formation of quarter-strength surface-pinned disclinations, as well as a large variety of director field configurations with splitting and reconnections of singular defect lines, prompted by colloidal particles with sharp edges and size large enough to define strong boundary conditions. Using examples of faceted ring-shaped particles of genus g = 1, we explore transformation of defect lines as they migrate between locations in the bulk of the nematic host to edge-pinned locations at the surfaces of particles and vice versa, showing that this behavior is compliant with topological constraints defined by mathematical theorems. We discuss how transformation of bulk and surface defect lines induced by faceted colloids can enrich the diversity of elasticity-mediated colloidal interactions and how these findings may impinge on prospects of their controlled reconfigurable self-assembly in nematic hosts.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Plasmonic complex fluids of nematiclike and helicoidal self-assemblies of gold nanorods with a negative order parameter

We describe a soft matter system of self-organized oblate micelles and plasmonic gold nanorods that exhibit a negative orientational order parameter. Because of anisotropic surface anchoring interactions, colloidal gold nanorods tend to align perpendicular to the director describing the average orientation of normals to the discoidal micelles. Helicoidal structures of highly concentrated nanorods with a negative order parameter are realized by adding a chiral additive and are further controlled by means of confinement and mechanical stress. Polarization-sensitive absorption, scattering, and two-photon luminescence are used to characterize orientations and spatial distributions of nanorods. Self-alignment and effective-medium optical properties of these hybrid inorganic-organic complex fluids match predictions of a simple model based on anisotropic surface anchoring interactions of nanorods with the structured host medium.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Colloidal spirals in nematic liquid crystals

One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means of guiding particle self-assembly and controlling the structure of particle-induced defects. In this work, we design, fabricate, and disperse low-symmetry colloidal particles with shapes of spirals, double spirals, and triple spirals in a nematic fluid. These spiral-shaped particles, which are controlled by varying their surface functionalization to provide tangential or perpendicular boundary conditions of the nematic molecular alignment, are found inducing director distortions and defect configurations with non-chiral or chiral symmetry. Colloidal particles also exhibit both stable and metastable multiple orientational states in the nematic host, with a large number of director configurations featuring both singular and solitonic nonsingular topological defects accompanying them, which can result in unusual forms of colloidal self-assembly. Our findings directly demonstrate how the symmetry of particle-generated director configurations can be further lowered, or not, as compared to the low point group symmetry of solid micro-inclusions, depending on the nature of induced defects while satisfying topological constraints. We show that achiral colloidal particles can cause chiral symmetry breaking of elastic distortions, which is driven by complex three-dimensional winding of induced topological line defects and solitons.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Geometry-guided colloidal interactions and self-tiling of elastic dipoles formed by truncated pyramid particles in liquid crystals

The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and quasicrystalline self-organization of colloids, we develop truncated pyramidal particles that form nematic elastic dipoles with long-range electrostaticlike and geometry-guided low-symmetry short-range interactions. Using a combination of nonlinear optical imaging, laser tweezers, and video microscopy, we characterize colloidal pair interactions and demonstrate unusual forms of self-tiling of these particles into crystalline, quasicrystalline, and other arrays. Our findings are explained using an electrostatics analogy along with liquid crystal elasticity and symmetry breaking considerations, potentially expanding photonic and electro-optic applications of colloids.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2016

Colloidal Surfaces with Boundaries, Apex Boojums and Nested Elastic Self-Assembly of Nematic Colloids

Self-assembly of colloidal particles is poised to become a powerful composite material fabrication technique, but remains challenged by a limited control over the ensuing structures. We develop a new breed of nematic colloids that are physical analogs of a mathematical surface with boundary, interacting with the molecular alignment field without inducing defects when flat. However, made from a thin nanofoil, they can be shaped to prompt formation of self-compensating defects that drive pre-programmed elastic interactions mediated by the nematic host. To show this, we wrap the nanofoil on all triangular side faces of a pyramid, except its square base. The ensuing pyramidal cones induce point defects with fractional hedgehog charges of opposite signs, spontaneously align with respect to the far-field director to form elastic dipoles and nested assemblies with tunable spacing. Nanofoils shaped into octahedrons interact as elastic quadrupoles. Our findings may drive realization of low-symmetry colloidal phases.

cond-mat.soft↗