The opportunities for guiding assembly using elastic energy stored in soft matter are wide open. The emerging scientific frontiers in this field show an exceptional promise for significant new applications. Since soft materials can be readily reconfigured, there are unplumbed opportunities to make responsive devices including smart windows for energy efficiency, and responsive optical structures. In the other hand, the trapping of colloidal objects at interfaces between immiscible fluids has proven to exhibit incredible abilities to template the arrangement of particles into rich ordered structures. These structures are controlled by lateral forces that compete with capillary forces. However, these interactions are still unexplored when particles are trapped at the interface of an ordered fluid. In this talk, I will present recent progress in understanding the mechanisms that govern interactions between particles at liquid crystal interfaces. I will report how the resulting potential induced by the interplay between elasticity and capillarity could lead to new opportunities for genuine spontaneous self-assembly and create new strategies for making new generation of advanced materials that may find relevance in many applications in the field of energy technology.

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