abstract

• Engineering the grain boundaries of crystalline materials represents an enduring challenge, particularly in the case of soft materials. Grain boundaries, however, can provide preferential sites for chemical reactions, adsorption processes, nucleation of phase transitions, and mechanical transformations. In this work, “soft heteroepitaxy” is used to exert precise control over the lattice orientation of three-dimensional liquid crystalline soft crystals, thereby granting the ability to sculpt the grain boundaries between them. Since these soft crystals are liquid-like in nature, the heteroepitaxy approach introduced here provides a clear strategy to accurately mold liquid-liquid interfaces in structured liquids with a hitherto unavailable level of precision. Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

authors

• De Pablo J.J.
• Dolan J.A.
• Guzmán O.
• Jin H.M.
• Kambe Y.
• Li X.
• Ma X.
• Martínez González José Adrián
• Nealey P.F.
• Park K.
• Zhou C.

publication date

• 2019-01-01

published in

• Science Advances  Journal

keywords

• Crystal orientation; Crystallites; Epitaxial growth; Liquid crystals; Adsorption process; Lattice orientations; Liquid crystalline; Liquid-liquid interfaces; Precise control; Soft crystals; Structured liquids; Grain boundaries; article; grain; liquid crystal

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1126/sciadv.aax9112

PubMed ID

• 31819903

start page

end page

volume

• 5

issue

• 11