The lipid-based bicontinuous cubic mesophase is a nanoporous membrane mimetic with applications in areas that include medicine, personal care products, foods and the basic sciences. An application of particular note concerns it use as a medium in which to grow crystals of membrane proteins for structure determination by X-ray crystallography. At least two variations of the mesophase exist. One ...

Addition effects of N-alkyl-substituted methylimidazolium salts ([CnMim][X]) on the mesophase structure and lower critical solution temperature (LCST)-type phase-separation behavior of concentrated hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) aqueous solutions were investigated mainly by spectrophotometry. In the cholesteric mesophase formation, at concentrations of more than 50 wt% HPC, helical pitch (P) was...

Two novel homologous series of phthalocyanines were prepared from 2,2-dialkylindane and 2,2-dialkyl-1,3-benzodioxole precursors. It was anticipated that attaching alkyl chains to five-membered rings, fused to the peripheral sites of the phthalocyanine ring, would result in the adoption of an out-of-plane configuration and thereby discourage cofacial aggregation, to provide an analogy with picke...

The lipidic mesophase or in meso method for crystallizing membrane proteins has several high profile targets to its credit and is growing in popularity. Despite its success, the method is in its infancy as far as rational crystallogenesis is concerned. Consequently, significant time, effort, and resources are still required to generate structure-grade crystals, especially with a new target type...

We present a polarising optical microscopy study of the low-temperature anticlinic-like tilted mesophase of the liquid-crystal compound octylphenyl-2-chloro-4-(p-cyano-benzoyloxy) (DB8Cl). This mesophase has been described as a bilayer smectic structure in which the molecules within each layer are organised in an anticlinic way. The optical textures observed in samples with planar orientation s...

By replacing volatile and flammable organic-based electrolytes with gel electrolytes, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) may be a viable more practical alternative to other clean energy sources. Although they present promising alternative, still have some drawbacks for applications, such as low ionic conductivity infusion difficulties into the pores of working electrode. Here, we introduce new ...

It is now recognized that self-assembly is a powerful synthetic approach to the fabrication of nanostructures with feature sizes smaller than achievable with state of the art lithography and with a complexity approaching that of biological systems. For example, recent research has shown that silica/surfactant self-assembly combined with evaporation (so-called evaporation induced self-assembly E...

The physical properties and phase transitions of thermotropic liquid crystals are highly sensitive to small changes in chemical structure. However, these changes are challenging to model, as both the phase diagram and mesophase properties obtained from fully atomistic simulations are strongly dependent on the force field model employed, and the current generation of chemical force fields has no...

We report a unique approach in which living cells direct their integration into 3D solid-state nanostructures. Yeast cells deposited on a weakly condensed lipid/silica thin film mesophase actively reconstruct the surface to create a fully 3D bio/nano interface, composed of localized lipid bilayers enveloped by a lipid/silica mesophase, through a self-catalyzed silica condensation process. Remar...