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Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs), that is, ionic liquids exhibiting mesomorphism, liquid crystalline phases, and anisotropic properties, have received intense attention in the past years. Among others, this is due to their special properties arising from the combination of properties stemming from ionic liquids and from liquid crystalline arrangements. Besides interesting fundamental aspects, ILCs have been claimed to have tremendous application potential that again arises from the combination of properties and architectures that are not accessible otherwise, or at least not accessible easily by other strategies. The current review highlights recent developments in ILC research, starting with some key fundamental aspects. Further subjects covered include the synthesis and variations of modern ILCs, including the specific tuning of their mesomorphic behavior. The review concludes with reflections on some applications that may be within reach for ILCs and finally highlights a few key challenges that must be overcome prior and during true commercialization of ILCs.
A directed attractive interaction between predefined "patchy" sites on the surfaces of anisotropic microcolloids can provide them with the ability to self-assemble in a controlled manner to build target structures of increased complexity. An important step toward the controlled formation of a desired superstructure is to identify reversible electrostatic interactions between patches which allow them to align with one another. The formation of bipatchy particles with two oppositely charged patches fabricated using sandwich microcontact printing is reported. These particles spontaneously self-aggregate in solution, where a diversity of short and long chains of bipatchy particles with different shapes, such as branched, bent, and linear, are formed. Calculations show that chain formation is driven by a combination of attractive electrostatic interactions between oppositely charged patches and the charge-induced polarization of interacting particles.
Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is a powerful structure determination technique that is well-suited to the study of protein and polymer self-assembly in solution. In contrast to conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) sample preparation, which often times involves drying and staining, the frozen-hydrated sample preparation allows the specimens to be kept and imaged in a state closest to their native one. Here, we give a short overview of the basic principles of Cryo-EM and review our results on applying it to the study of different protein and polymer self-assembled nanostructures. More specifically, we show how we have applied cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) to visualize the internal morphology of self-assembled poly(ionic liquid) nanoparticles and cryo-EM single particle analysis (SPA) to determine the three-dimensional (3D) structures of artificial protein microtubules.