Abstract

Blue phases (BPs) are three-dimensional self-assembly structures of liquid crystals with a lattice of line defects. They have attracted considerable interest as the potential in next generation displays. It is well known that BPs occur in cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) under certain thermodynamic conditions. However, previous studies have indicated that confining surfaces may induce distinctive structural changes. For example, a quasi-two-dimensional (Q2D) confinement system was investigated with the aid of numerical calculations, and a stable Q2D Skyrmion structure was attained. In this study, we investigated the CLC phase behavior at the molecular scale for a quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) nanotube system using molecular simulations. We observed the various morphological behaviors of CLCs by changing the temperature and the radius of nanotube. Specially, we discovered a self-assembly structures with cylindrical defects rather than lines by introducing a novel local orientation analysis. Our results show that the self-assembly of CLCs offers a guide to control the intensity in one-dimensional confinement and fundamental knowledge for application to optical devices.