Show/Hide Menu
Hide/Show Apps
anonymousUser
Logout
Türkçe
Türkçe
Search
Search
Login
Login
OpenMETU
OpenMETU
About
About
Open Science Policy
Open Science Policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Browse
Browse
By Issue Date
By Issue Date
Authors
Authors
Titles
Titles
Subjects
Subjects
Communities & Collections
Communities & Collections
A Practical Guide to the Preparation of Liquid Crystal-Templated Microparticles
Date
2017-01-10
Author
Wang, Xiaoguang
Büküşoğlu, Emre
Abbottt, Nicholas L.
Metadata
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
.
Item Usage Stats
7
views
0
downloads
We provide a practical guide to methods and protocols that use polymer networks templated from droplets of liquid crystal (LC) to synthesize micrometer-sized polymeric particles that are chemically patchy, are anisometric in shape, possess anisotropic optical properties, and/or are mesoporous. We describe a range of methods that permit the preparation of LC droplets (containing reactive monomers) as templates for polymerization, including formation of LC-in-water emulsions by mechanical methods (e.g., vortexing), encapsulation in polymeric shells, or microfluidics. The relative merits of the methods, including ease of use and potential pitfalls, and the resulting droplet size distributions, are described. We also report a menu of approaches that can be used to control the internal configurations of the LC droplets, including changes in composition of the continuous solvent phases (e.g., addition of glycerol) and adsorption of surfactants or colloids at the interfaces of the LC droplets. Photopolymerization of the LC droplets in bipolar, radial, axial, or preradial configurations and subsequent extraction of the nonreactive mesogens generates polymeric particles that have spindle, spherical, spherocylindrical, or tear shapes, respectively. Finally, we describe how to characterize these polymeric particles, including their shape, internal structure, optical properties, and porosity. The methods described in this paper, which provide access to complex microparticles with properties relevant to separation processes, drug delivery, and optical devices, are general and versatile and can be readily developed further (e.g., by changing the choice of LC) to create an even greater diversity of microparticles.
Subject Keywords
Materials Chemistry
,
General Chemistry
,
General Chemical Engineering
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/47203
Journal
CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b02668
Collections
Department of Chemical Engineering, Article