The extraordinary responsiveness and large diversity of self-assembled structures of liquid crystals are well documented and they have been extensively used in devices like displays. For long, this application route strongly influenced academic research, which frequently focused on the performance of liquid crystals in display-like geometries, typically between flat, rigid substrates of glass or similar solids. Today a new trend is clearly visible, where liquid crystals confined within curved, often soft and flexible, interfaces are in focus. Innovation in microfluidic technology has opened for high-throughput production of liquid crystal droplets or shells with exquisite monodispersity, and modern characterization methods allow detailed analysis of complex director arrangements. The introduction of electrospinning in liquid crystal research has enabled encapsulation in optically transparent polymeric cylinders with very small radius, allowing studies of confinement effects that were not easily accessible before. It also opened the prospect of functionalizing textile fibers with liquid crystals in the core, triggering activities that target wearable devices with true textile form factor for seamless integration in clothing. Together, these developments have brought issues center stage that might previously have been considered esoteric, like the interaction of topological defects on spherical surfaces, saddle-splay curvature-induced spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, or the non-trivial shape changes of curved liquid crystal elastomers with non-uniform director fields that undergo a phase transition to an isotropic state. The new research thrusts are motivated equally by the intriguing soft matter physics showcased by liquid crystals in these unconventional geometries, and by the many novel application opportunities that arise when we can reproducibly manufacture these systems on a commercial scale. This review attempts to summarize the current understanding of liquid crystals in spherical and cylindrical geometry, the state of the art of producing such samples, as well as the perspectives for innovative applications that have been put forward.

We here report on the optical, alignment and electro-optic properties of a nematic liquid crystal affected by the presence of semiconductor CdSe magic-sized nanocrystals (MSNCs). Three single-sized CdSe samples were tested, exhibiting bright bandgap photoluminescence (PL) with λ_max ≈ 463 nm and ∼10 nm full width at half-maximum (fwhm). The three quantum dot (QD) samples were passivated with a monolayer of myristic acid. Two of them (QD1 and QD2) only vary in the amount of defects as indicated by different bandgap and deep trap PL. The third MSNC sample (QD3) is compositionally different, doped with Zn. These MSNCs with almost identical sizes were doped at different concentrations (1–5 wt%) into the nematic phase of 5-n-heptyl-2-(4-n-octyloxyphenyl)-pyrimidine (LC1). Only QD3 showed the formation of birefringent stripes surrounded by areas of homeotropic alignment between plain glass slides at all concentrations as observed for many other nanoparticle-doped nematic liquid crystals reported earlier by our group. In polyimide-coated glass slides favouring planar orientation of the nematic director, planar alignment was observed. Surprisingly, only the Zn-doped magic-sized QD3quantum dots (CdSe@Zn) significantly lower the dielectric anisotropy as well as the splay elastic constant of the nematic host, despite identical size and surface functionality, which highlights the tremendous effect of the nanocrystal core composition on the electro-optic properties of the nematic host. In addition, fluorescence confocal (polarizing) microscopy studies show the director field within and around the birefringent stripes and confirm locally elevated concentrations or aggregates of the MCNC that are otherwise randomly distributed in the nematic host.

We show how the contamination with mobile charge carriers caused by nanoparticle doping affects the dielectric response of a nematic host material and deteriorates its electro-optic performance.

Dispersions of chemically and thermally robust carbon dots (2.5 ± 0.5 nm in core diameter) were prepared and investigated by polarised optical microscopy, electro-optic measurements including dynamic tests and numerical simulations as well as fluorescence confocal microscopy. The carbon dots were prepared by a straightforward thermal decomposition method from citric acid and hexadecylamine, and they show typical excitation wavelength-dependent photoluminescence behaviour. All dispersions, ranging from 0.5 to 5.0 wt.%, showed lower values for isotropic–nematic phase transition temperature and broader isotropic–nematic biphasic temperature intervals with increasing carbon dot content in comparison to the neat material. Doping of the nematic host with the carbon dots resulted in lower values for the apparent threshold voltage and the elastic constants, but higher values for the rotational viscosity. At 2.5 wt.% and higher, carbon dots residing at the confining interfaces in planar cells induce an increasing initial pre-tilt of up to 8° at lower temperatures. Fluorescence confocal microscopy confirmed this, where the luminescence of the carbon dots permitted visualisation of the distribution of the carbon dots in the bulk with a noticeable, in some cases even pattern-like, segregation to the confining interfaces. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

We examine for the first time how chemically and thermally stable gold nanoparticles (NPs), prepared by a silane conjugation approach, affect both the thermal and the electro-optical properties of a nematic liquid crystal (LC), when doped at concentrations ranging from 0.25 to 7.5 wt%. We find that the octadecylsilane-conjugated gold NPs stabilize both the enantiotropic nematic and the monotropic smectic-A phases of the LC host with a maximum stabilization of 2 ^° C for the nematic and 3.5 ^° C for the smectic-A phases for the mixture containing 1 wt% of the silanized particles. The same mixture shows the lowest values for the Fréedericksz transition threshold voltage and the highest value for the dielectric anisotropy. Generally, all NP-containing mixtures, except mixtures with NP concentrations exceeding 5 wt%, reduce the threshold voltage, increase the dielectric anisotropy and reduce both rise and decay time; the latter particularly at temperatures at least 10 ^° C below the isotropic–nematic phase transition on cooling.