title: Synthesis and Liquid-Crystal Behavior of Bent Colloidal Silica Rods.
abstract: The design and assembly of novel colloidal particles are of both academic and technological interest. We developed a wet-chemical route to synthesize monodisperse bent rigid silica rods by controlled perturbation of emulsion-templated growth. The bending angle of the rods can be tuned in a range of 0-50° by varying the strength of perturbation in the reaction temperature or pH in the course of rod growth. The length of each arm of the bent rods can be individually controlled by adjusting the reaction time. For the first time we demonstrated that the bent silica rods resemble banana-shaped liquid-crystal molecules and assemble into ordered structures with a typical smectic B2 phase. The bent silica rods could serve as a visualizable mesoscopic model for exploiting the phase behaviors of bent molecules which represent a typical class of liquid-crystal molecules.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University , Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Guangdong
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Luz J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Martinez-Miranda
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University , Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry, Jilin University , Changchun 130012, China.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Nie
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D050866:Liquid Crystals; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids; D012822:Silicon Dioxide