Biaxial ferromagnetic liquid crystal colloids.
The design and practical realization of composite materials that combine fluidity and different forms of ordering at the mesoscopic scale are among the grand fundamental science challenges. These composites also hold a great potential for technological applications, ranging from information displays to metamaterials. Here we introduce a fluid with coexisting polar and biaxial ordering of organic molecular and magnetic colloidal building blocks exhibiting the lowest symmetry orientational order. Guided by interactions at different length scales, rod-like organic molecules of this fluid spontaneously orient along a direction dubbed "director," whereas magnetic colloidal nanoplates order with their dipole moments parallel to each other but pointing at an angle to the director, yielding macroscopic magnetization at no external fields. Facile magnetic switching of such fluids is consistent with predictions of a model based on competing actions of elastic and magnetic torques, enabling previously inaccessible control of light.
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309;
Qingkun
Q
Liu
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309;
Paul J
PJ
Ackerman
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
Tom C
TC
Lubensky
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; Materials Science and Engineering Program, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309; Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 ivan.smalyukh@colorado.edu.
Ivan I
II
Smalyukh
colloidal dispersion; ferromagnetism; nematic; self-assembly