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Engineered Anisotropic Fluids of Rare-Earth Nanomaterials |
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| Authors: | Dr Baiqi Shao Dr Sikang Wan Chenjing Yang Dr Jianlei Shen Dr Yiwen Li Prof Hongpeng You Prof Dong Chen Prof Chunhai Fan Prof Kai Liu Prof Hongjie Zhang |
| Institution: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022 China
These authors contributed equally to this work.;2. State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022 China University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 China These authors contributed equally to this work.;3. Institute of Process Equipment, College of Energy Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027 China;4. Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240 China;5. National Center for Protein Science Shanghai, Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 201210 China;6. State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022 China University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026 China;7. State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022 China |
| Abstract: | The self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles into well-ordered structures in the absence of solvents is generally hindered by van der Waals forces, leading to random aggregates between them. To address the problem, we functionalized rigid rare-earth (RE) nanoparticles with a layer of flexible polymers by electrostatic complexation. Consequently, an ordered and solvent-free liquid crystal (LC) state of RE nanoparticles was realized. The RE nanomaterials including nanospheres, nanorods, nanodiscs, microprisms, and nanowires all show a typical nematic LC phase with one-dimensional orientational order, while their microstructures strongly depend on the particles’ shape and size. Interestingly, the solvent-free thermotropic LCs possess an extremely wide temperature range from ?40 °C to 200 °C. The intrinsic ordering and fluidity endow anisotropic luminescence properties in the system of shearing-aligned RE LCs, offering potential applications in anisotropic optical micro-devices. |
| Keywords: | anisotropic luminescence nanoengineering rare-earth materials self-assembly thermotropic liquid crystals |