Heat-Driven Rigid-Body Rotation of a Mixture of Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Droplets and Colloids.

We show that cholesteric (Ch) liquid crystal droplets with cylindrically symmetric orientation dispersing in an isotropic (Iso) phase exhibited unidirectional rotation under a heat flux along the symmetry axis. By introducing colloidal particles adhesive to the Ch droplets surface, we traced the translational motion of the colloids and found that the colloids rotated unidirectionally around the center of each Ch droplet. The director configuration of the droplets was not distorted either spatially or temporally while the colloids rotated constantly. The results suggest that the Ch droplets under the heat flux should rotate as a rigid body. Using this heat-driven rotation of the Ch droplets, we designed new geometries of various composites of Ch droplets and colloids and succeeded in driving intriguing complex dynamics.