Fabrication of disordered porous structures by solvent-assisted reorganisation of liquid crystal materials

Shaping of self-assembled soft materials is of interest for material science and nanotechnology applications because it can provide a flexible and easy method to obtain a single domain in a large area, which is used in opto-electronic and patterning applications. Here, we fabricated disordered porous structures of liquid crystals (LCs) by using a solvent-assisted treatment. Initially, the LC-based layered structures had either toric focal conic domains (TFCDs) or planar aligned samples. After treatment, disordered porous structures with randomly oriented layers were obtained although both initial and final states exhibited short-range ordering of the LC molecules. This behaviour was precisely analysed by polarised optical microscopy (POM), field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) methods. Our resultant platform showed that disordered porous structures formed by LC materials can be used for tuneable and reversible multiple scattering applications.