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Updated: Jun 9, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Soft crystal martensites: An in situ resonant soft x-ray scattering study of a liquid crystal martensitic
Hyeong Min Jin1,2, Xiao Li1,3, James A Dolan1,4
1Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Abstract:
Liquid crystal blue phases (BPs) are three-dimensional soft crystals with unit cell sizes orders of magnitude larger than those of classic, atomic crystals. The directed self-assembly of BPs on chemically patterned surfaces uniquely enables detailed in situ resonant soft x-ray scattering measurements of martensitic phase transformations in these systems. The formation of twin lamellae is explicitly identified during the BPII-to-BPI transformation, further corroborating the martensitic nature of this transformation and broadening the analogy between soft and atomic crystal diffusionless phase transformations to include their strain-release mechanisms.
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