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Organic Glasses with Tunable Liquid-Crystalline Order
Rattavut Teerakapibal1, Chengbin Huang1, Ankit Gujral2
1School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53705, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|February 27, 2018
Summary
Itraconazole avoids the typical liquid crystal (LC) nematic to smectic transition at high cooling rates. This allows for trapping tunable LC order in organic glasses for electronic applications.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Physical Chemistry
Background:
- Liquid crystals (LCs) typically exhibit rapid ordering transitions with minimal hysteresis.
- Understanding the kinetic pathways of phase transitions is crucial for materials design.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the nematic to smectic transition in itraconazole at high cooling rates.
- To explore the possibility of preparing organic glasses with tunable liquid crystal order.
Main Methods:
- High-speed cooling experiments on itraconazole.
- Analysis of the resulting glassy state to determine the degree of smectic order.
Main Results:
- The nematic to smectic transition was avoided in itraconazole at cooling rates above 20 K/s.
- A glassy state with trapped smectic order was achieved, reflecting pre-kinetic arrest equilibrium.
Conclusions:
- Smectic ordering, requiring orientational ordering, can be kinetically trapped in organic glasses.
- This provides a method for creating organic glasses with tunable LC order for electronic applications.
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