Periodic liquid crystal templating

Matthias H, Roder T, Wehrspohn RB, Kitzerow H-S, Matthias S, Picken SJ (2005b) Spatially periodic liquid crystal director field appearing in a photonic crystal template. Appl Phys Lett 87 241105... 

Figure 18.1 Synthesis of periodic mesoporous materiais assisted by SDAs (A). Route 1 true liquid crystal templating mechanism. Route 2 cooperative self-assembly mechanism. (Adapted from Refs [44,45].)...

Zhu H.G., Jones D.J., Zajac J., Roziere J., Dutartre R. Periodic large mesoporous organosilicas from lyotropic liquid crystal polymer templates. Chem. Cornmun. 2001 2568-2569... 

Polymer inverse opals (Figure 9.10) can be formed by partially or fidly filling the void spaces of a colloidal crystal with a liquid precursor by capillary action. These precursors are generally UVor thermally-curable polymers, such as polyurethenes or polyacrylates, epoxies with initiators, sol-gel materials or more recently conducting polymers like polypyrrole [113, 117-122]. The liquid precursors are then solidified and the original template is removed. This results in long-range ordered porous material with a predse periodic structure which has found use in many applications such as photonics, membranes and biosensors. 

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