Chinese Journal of Liquid Crystals and Displays, Volume. 37, Issue 12, 1520(2022)
Progress on Frank-Kasper phases in soft matter
Man’s exploration of the microstructure of matter has never stopped, and understanding how particles stack up in space is still remaining a great challenge for scientists and technicians. The soft matter often shows abundant self-assembly morphologies and phase topological structures due to the drive of weak intermolecular interactions and the competition of entropic enthalpies. Among them, Frank-Kasper phases are the most fascinating, which have complex topologically dense stacking structures. As a transition state between crystal and quasicrystal, the Frank-Kasper phase has a kind of complex spherical phase structure with a dense icosahedral shell and a high coordination number (CN=14,15,16). The soft matter offers novel molecular and self-assembled structures for study of Frank-Kasper phase. This paper presents a brief review of the research process on soft matters such as small molecule surfactants, block copolymers, dendritic macromolecules and giant amphiphilic molecules that can form Frank-Kasper phases. These soft matters can be used as a material for studying the spatial accumulation of non-homogeneous and deformable soft spheres. The Frank-Kasper phase plays a crucial role in the mechanism of soft matter self-assembling into complex topological close-packing structures, which should contribute to understanding the growth mechanism of quasicrystals.
Get Citation
Copy Citation Text
Xin-ran ZHANG, Wei-min ZHANG, Mao-xin ZHANG, Ao ZHANG, Ti WU, Chun-xiu ZHANG, Hai-feng YU. Progress on Frank-Kasper phases in soft matter[J]. Chinese Journal of Liquid Crystals and Displays, 2022, 37(12): 1520
Category: Research Articles
Received: Aug. 24, 2022
Accepted: --
Published Online: Nov. 30, 2022
The Author Email: Chun-xiu ZHANG (zhangchunxiu@bigc.edu.cn), Hai-feng YU (yuhaifeng@pku.edu.cn)