Fabrication of liquid crystalline shell using solvent diffusion

Abstract

We successfully fabricated liquid crystalline (LC) shells showing a crystalline phase or high viscosity at the room temperature by using a glass microcapillary system. The specific additive solution enables high viscosity and crystalline LC materials to flow without temperature control, and it can quickly diffuse to the outer phase at the moment of encapsulation, and then, the isotopic (Iso)-to-LC phase transition and the stabilization of core-shell structure occur. After the encapsulation the director fields in the LC shell can be aligned, indicating that the additive solution is removed from the shell phase completely. In particular, we have successfully fabricated chiral smectic C shells for the first time; they exhibited focal conic flower textures and stripes corresponding to the helical superstructure.