Field-controlled structures in ferromagnetic cholesteric liquid crystals.

ABSTRACT: One of the advantages of anisotropic soft materials is that their structures and, consequently, their properties can be controlled by moderate external fields. Whereas the control of materials with uniform orientational order is straightforward, manipulation of systems with complex orientational order is challenging. We show that a variety of structures of an interesting liquid material, which combine chiral orientational order with ferromagnetic one, can be controlled by a combination of small magnetic and electric fields. In the suspensions of magnetic nanoplatelets in chiral nematic liquid crystals, the platelet's magnetic moments orient along the orientation of the liquid crystal and, consequently, the material exhibits linear response to small magnetic fields. In the absence of extern

SUBMITTER: Medle Rupnik P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5630240 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature