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Cellulose nanocrystals
Chiral nematic defects
Hyperspectral imaging
Nucleation and growth
Security printing
Spinodal decomposition
Cellulose
Cellulose derivatives
Cellulose films
Defects
Self assembly
Spectroscopy
Cellulose nanocrystal (CNCs)
Chiral-nematic films
Cholesteric structure
Circularly polarized light
Cross-sectional SEM
Simulation parameters
Solvent evaporation
Optical films
Assembly
Evaporation
Patterns
Plastic Films
Abstract:
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) can spontaneously assemble into chiral nematic films capable of reflecting circularly polarized light in the visible range. As many other photonic materials obtained by bottom-up approaches, CNC films often display defects that greatly impact their visual appearance. Here, we study the optical response of defects in photonic CNC films, coupling optical microscopy with hyperspectral imaging, and we compare it to optical simulations of discontinuous cholesteric structures of increasing complexity. Cross-sectional SEM observations of the film structure guided the choice of simulation parameters and showed excellent agreement with experimental optical patterns. More importantly, it strongly suggests that the last fraction of CNCs to self-assemble, upon solvent evaporation, does not undergo the typical nucleation and growth pathway, but a spinodal decomposition, an alternative self-assembly pathway so far overlooked in cast films and that can have far-reaching consequences on choices of CNC sources and assembly conditions. © 2020 American Chemical Society.
