Liquid crystals enable chemoresponsive reconfigurable colloidal self-assembly

摘要

Liquid crystals (LCs) and colloids have large response functions, a property that Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (1) identified as the most significant unifying concept of soft matter. This strong response to external fields enables practical applications ranging from nonmechanical beam steering, to information displays, to label-free biological sensors (2-4).