Blue Phase Liquid Crystal Nanocomposites: Variation of Nanoparticle Size, Shape and Ligand Shell

Chiral Blue Phase liquid crystals (BPLCs) are 3D soft photonic crystals with unique cubic crystal structures. Due to their ultrafast response to electronic fields and optical properties, many efforts are underway to develop opto-electronic BPLC devices but are hindered by narrow BP temperature ranges, widened by adding polymers and/or nanoparticle (NPs). We previously showed that gold NPs in BPLCs reversibly form giant 3D cubic crystals but apart from our study, the NP spatial distributions, important for applications and understanding BPLC fundamental properties, have not been characterized. USAXS will be applied to study the effect of NP size, shape and ligand shell on the NP spatial distributions and BPLC stability.