title: A liquid-crystalline hexagonal columnar phase in highly-dilute suspensions of imogolite nanotubes.
abstract: Liquid crystals have found wide applications in many fields ranging from detergents to information displays and they are also increasingly being used in the 'bottom-up' self-assembly approach of material nano-structuration. Moreover, liquid-crystalline organizations are frequently observed by biologists. Here we show that one of the four major lyotropic liquid-crystal phases, the columnar one, is much more stable on dilution than reported so far in literature. Indeed, aqueous suspensions of imogolite nanotubes, at low ionic strength, display the columnar liquid-crystal phase at volume fractions as low as ∼ 0.2%. Consequently, due to its low visco-elasticity, this columnar phase is easily aligned in an alternating current electric field, in contrast with usual columnar liquid-crystal phases. These findings should have important implications for the statistical physics of the suspensions of charged rods and could also be exploited in materials science to prepare ordered nanocomposites and in biophysics to better understand solutions of rod-like biopolymers.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Erwan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Paineau
authors.affiliation: LIONS, NIMBE, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette 91191, France.
authors.forename: Marie-Eve M
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Krapf
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Mohamed-Salah
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Amara
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Natalia V
authors.initials: NV
authors.lastname: Matskova
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dozov
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Stéphan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rouzière
authors.affiliation: LIONS, NIMBE, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, CEA-Saclay, Gif sur Yvette 91191, France.
authors.forename: Antoine
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Thill
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Pascale
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4314-1076
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Launois
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Univ. Paris-Sud, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay 91405, France.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Davidson