Morphology of Nematic and Smectic Vesicles

Abstract

Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer vesicles can lead to significantly deformed vesicles as a result of the delicate interplay between two-dimensional ordering and vesicle shape. The inevitable topological defects in structured vesicles of spherical topology also play an essential role in controlling the final vesicle morphology. Here we develop a minimal theoretical model for the morphology of the membrane structure with internal nematic/smectic order. Using both analytic and numerical approaches, we show that the possible low free energy morphologies include nano-size cylindrical micelles (nano-fibers), faceted tetrahedral vesicles, and ellipsoidal vesicles, as well as cylindrical vesicles. The tetrahedral vesicle is a particularly fascinating example of a faceted liquid-crystalline membrane. Faceted liquid vesicles may lead to the design of supra-molecular structures with tetrahedral symmetry and new classes of nano-carriers.

7 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Virus shapes and buckling transitions in spherical shells
• Topological Defects in Spherical Nematics
• Smectic Polymer Vesicles
• Self-assembly of liquid crystal block copolymer PEG-b-smectic polymer in pure state and in dilute aqueous solution
• Defects in nematic membranes can buckle into pseudospheres

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Topological Sound and Flocking on Curved Surfaces
• Particle-resolved topological defects of smectic colloidal liquid crystals in extreme confinement
• Structural Landscapes in Geometrically Frustrated Smectics
• Liquid Crystalline Polymer Vesicles: Thermotropic Phases in Lyotropic Structures
• Liquid crystals of hard rectangles on flat and cylindrical manifolds
• Nonlinear elastic model for faceting of vesicles with soft grain boundaries
• Thick smectic shells
• Hyperbolic Interfaces
• Forming a cube from a sphere with tetratic order
• Shapes and singularities in triatic liquid crystal vesicles
• Curvature-driven stability of defects in nematic textures over spherical disks
• Deformation and chaining of flexible shells in a nematic solvent
• Topology and ground state degeneracy of tetrahedral smectic vesicles
• Vortex interaction on curved surfaces
• Active smectics on a sphere
• Stability of topological wall defects on spheres with n-atic order