Séminaire Regis Guegan

Organization of self-assembled species under confinement and their possible applications

Régis Guégan, Interfaces Confinement Matériaux et Nanostructures ICMN UMR 7374, CNRS-Université d’Orléans

The topological confinement imposed by both rigid (through porous materials) and soft matrixes at a mesoscopic scale strongly modifies the landscape of the free energy of guest species and necessitates to consider the concepts of the interface and other effects that affect the organization, dynamics, and final properties of the resulting hybrid materials. If the effects of confinement start to be well-known for globular liquids (change of density, depression of the phase transition temperatures or suppression of them), the scenario seems to be more subtle for soft matter systems such as liquid crystalline assemblies with strong pre-transitional effects as well as orientational correlations. The understanding of those effects of interfaces and organization induced by surfaces of organic moieties are of primary importance in diverse technological applications (cleaning, emulsifiers, templates in the synthesis of mesoporous materials …).

In this contribution, I will present my research activities focusing on the understanding of self-organization and changes in structure and dynamics of soft matter systems (thermotropic or lyotropic liquid crystals and other membrane systems), subjected to topological constraints imposed by diverse rigid and soft matrixes including well defined mesoporous materials (porous silica or alumina) or layered materials (clay minerals and graphene oxide).