TY - JOUR
T1 - In Situ Optical Characterization of Twinning in Liquid Crystalline Blue Phases
AU - Zhang, Yuxian
AU - Yoshida, Hiroyuki
AU - Cho, Seongyong
AU - Fukuda, Jun Ichi
AU - Ozaki, Masanori
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Prof. Hirotsugu Kikuchi of Kyushu University and JNC Corporation for providing the BP materials and DIC and JSR Corporation for providing the alignment materials. Y.Z. and H.Y. are thankful to Ms. Misaki Takahashi for assistance with experiments and Dr. Kaixuan Chen in University of Science and Technology Beijing for valuable discussions. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (JP19H02581, JP19K21975, JP20H00391, JP20H04672, JP20K21154, and JP21H01049), MEXT Leading Initiative for Excellent Young Researchers, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 62005008.
Publisher Copyright:
©
PY - 2021/8/4
Y1 - 2021/8/4
N2 - Crystal twinning is an intergrowth of two or more single crystals of the same species with specific crystallographic relations in their orientations. Here, we perform microscopic optical characterization of (211) twins in the three-dimensional liquid crystalline phase known as the blue phase (BP), with I4132 space group symmetry. We describe the effect of twinning on the optical diffraction pattern - Kossel pattern - of blue phases and analyze the patterns to deduce structural information such as the twin elements and the previously unnoticed deviations from the perfect cubic structure at zero electric field. Further, we obtain in situ observations as a field is applied along the [110] direction of the twinning crystals and find that the twin boundary shows a pinning effect that defines the orientation of the twinned pair through the cubic-to-orthogonal structure transformation. Our findings not only provide important insights for the application of BPs as electro-optic crystals but also present a step in understanding the hierarchical structures that are crystallographic.
AB - Crystal twinning is an intergrowth of two or more single crystals of the same species with specific crystallographic relations in their orientations. Here, we perform microscopic optical characterization of (211) twins in the three-dimensional liquid crystalline phase known as the blue phase (BP), with I4132 space group symmetry. We describe the effect of twinning on the optical diffraction pattern - Kossel pattern - of blue phases and analyze the patterns to deduce structural information such as the twin elements and the previously unnoticed deviations from the perfect cubic structure at zero electric field. Further, we obtain in situ observations as a field is applied along the [110] direction of the twinning crystals and find that the twin boundary shows a pinning effect that defines the orientation of the twinned pair through the cubic-to-orthogonal structure transformation. Our findings not only provide important insights for the application of BPs as electro-optic crystals but also present a step in understanding the hierarchical structures that are crystallographic.
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U2 - 10.1021/acsami.1c06873
DO - 10.1021/acsami.1c06873
M3 - Article
C2 - 34282884
AN - SCOPUS:85111571194
VL - 13
SP - 36130
EP - 36137
JO - ACS applied materials & interfaces
JF - ACS applied materials & interfaces
SN - 1944-8244
IS - 30
ER -