The nature of the assembly process in chromonic liquid crystals

Abstract

Chromonic liquid crystals form when certain molecules are dissolved in a solvent, usually water, and the molecules spontaneously assemble into anisotropic structures. If the density of these structures is high enough and the temperature is low enough, they organize into a liquid crystal phase with orientational and sometimes with positional order also. Chromonic liquid crystals have been studied for more than half a century, yet theoretical, computational, and experimental investigations in the last decade have revealed many more details about them. The molecular structures that form chromonic liquid crystals are quite varied, and as a result the assemblies that these molecules form vary significantly also. Recent research has begun to shed light on these assembly processes, revealing that these too can be quite different from one system to another.

Keywords:

• chromonic
• liquid crystal
• lyotropic
• molecular assembly
• assembly kinetics

Acknowledgments

The authors also thank Heinrich Roder and Ming Xu of the Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia, PA) for allowing the use of the SX20 stopped-flow spectrophotometer.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This assumes the element of phase space used to calculate the external degrees of freedom is set equal to the molecular volume.

Additional information

Funding

Partial support of this research from the donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund is gratefully acknowledged, along with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the REU Program at the Laboratory for Research in the Structure of Matter at the University of Pennsylvania.