Double-twist cylinders in liquid crystalline cholesteric blue phases observed by transmission electron microscopy

Cholesteric blue phases are liquid crystalline phases in which the constituent rod-like molecules spontaneously form three-dimensional, helical structures. Despite theoretical predictions that they are composed of cylindrical substructures within which the liquid crystal molecules are doubly twisted, real space observation of the arrangement of such structures had not been performed. Through transmission electron microscopy of photopolymerized blue phases with controlled lattice plane orientations, we report real space observation and comparison of the lattice structures of blue phases I and II. The two systems show distinctly different contrasts, reflecting the theoretically predicted, body centred and simple cubic arrangement of the double-twist cylinders. Transmission electron microscopy also reveals different tendencies of the two blue phases to align on unidirectionally rubbed surfaces. We thus show that TEM observation of alignment-controlled, photopolymerized liquid crystals can be a powerful tool to investigate complex liquid crystalline order.