Thermally reconfigurable monoclinic nematic colloidal fluids

Abstract

Fundamental relationships are believed to exist between the symmetries of building blocks and the condensed matter phases that they form¹. For example, constituent molecular and colloidal rods and disks impart their uniaxial symmetry onto nematic liquid crystals, such as those used in displays^1,2. Low-symmetry organizations could form in mixtures of rods and disks^3,4,5, but entropy tends to phase-separate them at the molecular and colloidal scales, whereas strong elasticity-mediated interactions drive the formation of chains and crystals in nematic colloids^{6,7,8,9,10,11}. To have a structure with few or no symmetry operations apart from trivial ones has so far been demonstrated to be a property of solids alone¹, but not of their fully fluid condensed matter counterparts, even though such symmetries have been considered theoretically^{12,13,<a data-track="click" data-track-action="reference anchor" data-track-label="link"...}