Chiral Nematic Liquid Crystals as Generative Platforms for Disordered Architected Materials

Biological materials often exploit porous, disordered micro-architectures to balance stiffness, weight, and transport. However, reproducing such structures at engineering scales remains challenging. Here we use chiral nematic liquid crystals as a design platform where their self-organized disclination (defect) networks act as physics-constrained generators of both ordered and disordered three-dimensional architectures. Chiral nematic (cholesteric) liquid crystals possess long-range orientational order with a helical twist; in highly chiral regimes they form blue phases composed of double-twisted cylinders packed and stabilized by 3D disclination networks, ranging from periodically ordered to disordered networks.

Using a Landau–de Gennes phase-field framework with randomly initial conditions, we computationally generate continuous curvilinear defect networks which are then idealized as bicontinuous solid architectures. By tuning chirality, elastic constants, and an effective thermal schedule, we systematically control ligament-diameter distributions, connectivity, relative density, and curvature. Using image-based morphometrics and differential geometry descriptors, we quantify structural features. Then, by finite-element homogenization we map these descriptors to effective stiffness, energy absorption, and recoverability. We then scale to sub-millimeter feature sizes via additive manufacturing and validate the predicted trends under compressive stress.

This physics-guided workflow links defect-mediated topology to continuum-level mechanics in disordered porous materials and offers design rules for bioinspired, lightweight, load-bearing architectures.