Curvature instability of chiral colloidal membranes on crystallization

Saikia, Lachit and Sarkar, Tanmoy and Thomas, Meera and Raghunathan, V A and Sain, Anirban and Sharma, Prerna (2017) Curvature instability of chiral colloidal membranes on crystallization. In: NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, 8 .

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Abstract

Buckling and wrinkling instabilities are failure modes of elastic sheets that are avoided in the traditional material design. Recently, a new paradigm has appeared where these instabilities are instead being utilized for high-performance applications. Multiple approaches such as heterogeneous gelation, capillary stresses, and confinement have been used to shape thin macroscopic elastic sheets. However, it remains a challenge to shape two-dimensional selfassembled monolayers at colloidal or molecular length scales. Here, we show the existence of a curvature instability that arises during the crystallization of finite-sized monolayer membranes of chiral colloidal rods. While the bulk of the membrane crystallizes, its edge remains fluid like and exhibits chiral ordering. The resulting internal stresses cause the flat membrane to buckle macroscopically and wrinkle locally. Our results demonstrate an alternate pathway based on intrinsic stresses instead of the usual external ones to assemble non-Euclidean sheets at the colloidal length scale.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Additional Information:	Copy right for this article belongs to the NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, MACMILLAN BUILDING, 4 CRINAN ST, LONDON N1 9XW, ENGLAND
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	17 Nov 2017 05:26
Last Modified:	17 Nov 2017 05:26
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/58263

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