화학공학소재연구정보센터
Advanced Materials, Vol.18, No.19, 2565-2565, 2006
Smectic liquid-crystalline order in suspensions of highly polydisperse goethite nanorods
Optical Bragg reflections and small-angle X-ray scattering (see figure) reveal that dispersions of Goethite (FeOOH) nanorods spontaneously form layered (smectic A) structures, although their 55% length polydispersity exceeds the theoretical limit by a factor of three. Here, sedimentation and size partitioning contribute to a very rich phase behavior including nematic and columnar phases. This suggests the application of the self-organizing tendencies of such mineral liquid crystals to obtain materials with very diverse nanostructures.