Directing Soft Matter in Water Using Electric Fields

Directing
the spatial organization of functional supramolecular
and polymeric materials at larger length scales is essential for many
biological and molecular optoelectronic applications. Although the
application of electrical fields is one of the most powerful approaches
to induce spatial control, it is rarely applied experimentally in
aqueous solutions, since the low susceptibility of soft and biological
materials requires the use of high fields, which leads to parasitic
heating and electrochemical degradation. In this work, we demonstrate
that we can apply electric fields when we use a mineral liquid crystal
as a responsive template. Besides aligning and positioning functional
soft matter, we show that the concentration of the liquid crystal
template controls the morphology of the assembly. As our setup is
very easy to operate and our approach lacks specific molecular interactions,
we believe it will be applicable for a wide range of (aqueous) materials.