Related papers: Flexoelectric blue phases
Doped HfO2 thin films exhibit robust ferroelectric properties even for nanometric thicknesses, are compatible with current Si technology and thus have great potential for the revival of integrated ferroelectrics. Phase control and…
Phase field crystal (PFC) models constitute a field theoretical approach to solidification, melting and related phenomena at atomic length and diffusive time scales. One of the advantages of these models is that they naturally contain…
This article analyzes modulated phases in liquid crystals, from the long-established cholesteric and blue phases to the recently discovered twist-bend, splay-bend, and splay nematic phases, as well as the twist-grain-boundary (TGB) and…
The macroscopic dielectric permittivity of dielectric crystals is related to the microscopic atomic polarizability of constituent atoms by the known Clausius-Mossotti relation obtained in the middle of 19th century. We derive a similar…
Upon application of a uniform strain, internal sub-lattice shifts within the unit cell of a non-centrosymmetric dielectric crystal result in the appearance of a net dipole moment: a phenomenon well known as piezoelectricity. A macroscopic…
A new theoretical approach has been developed to describe the elastic properties of cubic blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals (LCs). Blue phases are three-dimensional periodic chiral liquids with local anisotropy of the average…
Flexoelectricity describes the coupling between polarization and strain/stress gradients in insulating crystals. In this paper, using the Landau-Ginsburg-Devonshire phenomenological approach, we found that flexoelectricity could increase…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
We performed Monte Carlo simulations of systems of wedge-shaped objects formed from Gay-Berne ellipsoids joined to Lennard-Jones spheres. We studied two different wedge shapes, one more asymmetric than the other. The bend and splay…
The equilibrium behavior of a system of elastic layers under tension in the presence of correlated disorder is studied using functional renormalization group techniques. The model exhibits many of the features of the Bose glass phase of…
Recent imaging experiments show a surprisingly robust regime of liquid-solid phase coexistence in a 2D electron system near the quantum melting/freezing transition, with the two phases mixed in mesoscopic domains. Strikingly, the…
Different liquid crystalline phases with long-range orientational but not positional order, so-called nematic phases, are scarce. It rarely occurs that a new nematic phase is discovered and such event is inevitably accompanied by a great…
In chiral ferromagnets, weak spin-orbit interactions twist the ferromagnetic order into spirals, leading to helical order. We investigate an extended Ginzburg-Landau theory of such systems where the helical order is destabilized in favor of…
The free energy of antiferroelectric liquid crystal which takes into account polar order explicitly is presented. Steric, van der Waals, piezoelectric and flexoelectric interactions to the nearest layers and dipolar electrostatic…
The inherent inconsistency in identifying the phase field in the phase field crystal Theory with the material mass and, simultaneously, with material distortion is discussed. In its current implementation, elastic relaxation in the phase…
Blue phases (BPs) are liquid crystals made up by networks of defects, or disclination lines. While existing phase diagrams show a striking variety of competing metastable topologies for these networks, very little is known as to how to…
We show that nonlinear continuum elasticity can be effective in modeling plastic flows in crystals if it is viewed as Landau theory with an infinite number of equivalent energy wells whose configuration is dictated by the symmetry group…
Understanding the nature of brittle failure in ferroelectric materials is essential, but difficult due to the complex interaction between mechanical and electrical concentrated fields near the crack tip. In this work, an extended…
We numerically investigate the phase behavior of thick shells of cholesteric liquid crystals with tangential anchoring at the shell boundary. For achiral liquid crystal, we demonstrate a thickness-dependent transition from a configuration…
Different types of ordering phenomena may occur during phase transitions, described within the universal framework of the Landau theory through the evolution of one, or several, symmetry-breaking order parameter h. In addition, many systems…