Orientation Relaxation Dynamics in Cellulose Nanocrystal Dispersions in the Chiral Liquid Crystalline Phase

A Landau-de Gennes formulation was implemented in dynamic finite element simulations to compare with postshear relaxation experiments that were conducted on cholesteric cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) dispersions. Our study focused on the microstructural reassembly of CNCs in lyotropic dispersions as parameters such as chiral strength and gap confinement were varied. Our simulation results show that homeotropic and/or more complicated three-dimensional helical configurations are possible, depending on the choice of these parameters. We also observed how dynamic banding patterns develop into the hierarchical microstructures that are characterized by an equilibrium pitch length in both the experiments and simulations. This work has immediate relevance for cellulose nanocrystal dispersion processing and provides new insight into fluid phase ordering for tailorable optical properties.