Charge-driven liquid-crystalline behavior of ligand-functionalized nanorods in apolar solvent
Résumé
Concentrated colloidal suspensions of nanorods often exhibit liquid-crystalline (LC) behavior. The transition to a nematic LC phase, with long-range orientational order of the particles, is usually well captured by Onsager's theory for hard rods, at least qualitatively. The theory shows how the volume fraction at the transition decreases with increasing aspect ratio of the rods. It also explains that the long-range electrostatic repulsive interaction occurring between rods stabilized by their surface charge can significantly increase their effective diameter, resulting in a decrease of the volume fraction at the transition, as compared to sterically
Domaines
Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]
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