Complex Phases in Soft Matter

Organisers

Xiangbing Zeng

Prof. Gillian A. Gehring

Carsten Tschierske

Goran Ungar

Keywords: nano and mesoscale, structure, symmetry

Recently there have been many exciting discoveries of phases with complex new structures in soft matter, such as ferroelectric [1,2] and twist-bend nematics [3,4], liquid crystalline skyrmions [5], soft quasicrystals and Frank-Kasper phases [6,7], spontaneously chiral liquid crystals (Fig. 1) and even liquids [8], to name but a few. Many such discoveries share common underlying physical principles, despite their apparent diversity and length scale span from nanometers in thermotropic, lyotropic and chromonic liquid crystals, to tens or hundreds of nanometers in block and star polymers, and from micro- to macroscopic scale in biological, e.g. living matter [9], and colloidal systems. At the same time, such complex phases bear a strong potential for applications in chiral chemistry, chiro-optics and medicine, and as electronic, photonic and meta-materials. The proposed minicolloquium is intended to create a cross-disciplinary platform for researchers engaged in experiments, theory and simulation in the broad area of complex soft matter and self-assembly to stimulate discussion and collaboration to expand the field further and help understand, design, and apply such systems.

Figure 1: A spontaneously chiral bicontinuous cubic phase with three interpenetrating networks, with each network segment a twisted stack of molecules.

DOI: 10.1039/D0TC00447B.

References

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[5] J. Fukuda, A. Nych, U. Ognysta, S. Žumer and I. Muševič, Scientific Reports, 2018, 8, 17234.

[6] K. Yue, M. Huang, R.L. Marson, J. He, J. Huang, Z. Zhou, J. Wang, C. Liu, X. Yan, K. Wu, Z. Guo, H. Liu, W. Zhang, P. Ni, C. Wesdemiotis, W.-B. Zhang, S.C. Glotzer, S.Z.D. Cheng, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2016, 113, 14195.

[7] T.M.Gillard, S. Lee, F.S. Bates, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2016, 113, 5167.

[8] C. Dressel, T. Reppe, M. Prehm, M. Brautzsch and C. Tschierske, Nat. Chem. 2014, 6, 971.

[9] D. Louzon, A. Ginsburg, W. Schwenger, T. Dvir, Z. Dogic & U. Raviv, Biophysical J. 2017, 112, 2184.

Invited speakers:

Stephen Z. D. Cheng, University of Akron, Akron, USA
Alberta Ferrarini, Universita di Padova, Italy
Gregory Grason, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA
Weihua Li, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Alenka Mertelj, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Gerd Schroeder-Turk, Murdoch University, Perth, Australia
Slobodan Zumer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia