Controllable ingestion and release of guest components driven by interfacial molecular orientation of host liquid crystal droplets

Ruizhi Yang; Yueming Deng; Shuting Xie; Mengjun Liu; Yiying Zou; Tiezheng Qian; Qi An; Jiamei Chen; Shitao Shen; Albert van den Berg; Minmin Zhang; Lingling Shui

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.089

Controllable ingestion and release of guest components driven by interfacial molecular orientation of host liquid crystal droplets

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Dec 15;652(Pt A):557-566. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.089. Epub 2023 Aug 14.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Joint Laboratory of Optofluidic Technology and Systems (LOTS), National Center for International Research on Green Optoelectronics, South China Academy of Advanced Optoelectronics, School of Information and Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
² Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Functional Materials and Devices, School of Information and Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
³ Department of Mathematics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
⁴ BIOS Lab-on-a-Chip Group, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, Technical Medical Centre and Max Planck Centre for Complex Fluid Dynamics, University of Twente, AE, Enschede 7500, the Netherlands.
⁵ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Functional Materials and Devices, School of Information and Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China. Electronic address: zhangminmin@m.scnu.edu.cn.
⁶ Joint Laboratory of Optofluidic Technology and Systems (LOTS), National Center for International Research on Green Optoelectronics, South China Academy of Advanced Optoelectronics, School of Information and Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Functional Materials and Devices, School of Information and Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510006, China. Electronic address: shuill@m.scnu.edu.cn.

PMID: 37607418
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.08.089

Abstract

Controllable construction and manipulation of artificial multi-compartmental structures are crucial in understanding and imitating smart molecular elements such as biological cells and on-demand delivery systems. Here, we report a liquid crystal droplet (LCD) based three-dimensional system for controllable and reversible ingestion and release of guest aqueous droplets (GADs). Induced by interfacial thermodynamic fluctuation and internal topological defect, microscale LCDs with perpendicular anchoring condition at the interface would spontaneously ingest external components from the surroundings and transform them as radially assembled tiny GADs inside LCDs. Landau-de Gennes free-energy model is applied to describe and explain the assembly dynamics and morphologies of these tiny GADs, which presents a good agreement with experimental observations. Furthermore, the release of these ingested GADs can be actively triggered by changing the anchoring conditions at the interface of LCDs. Since those ingestion and release processes are controllable and happen very gently at room temperature and neutral pH environment without extra energy input, these microscale LCDs are very prospective to provide a unique and viable route for constructing hierarchical 3D structures with tunable components and compartments.

Keywords: Ingestion; Liquid crystal; Nematic field; Release; Self-assemble; Topological defect.