Related papers: Effective free energy method for nematic liquid cr…
Ferronematic materials are colloidal suspensions of magnetic particles in liquid crystals. They are complex materials with potential applications in display technologies, sensors, microfluidics devices, etc. We consider a model for…
We have developed a thorough and accurate method of determining anharmonic free energies, the temperature dependent effective potential technique (TDEP). It is based on \emph{ab initio} molecular dynamics followed by a mapping onto a model…
We demonstrate the generation of diverse material flow regimes in nematic liquid cells as driven by time-variable active surface anchoring, including no-net flow, oscillatory flow, steady flow, and pulsating flow. Specifically, we…
Nematic liquid crystals in a polyhedral domain, a prototype for bistable displays, may be described by a unit-vector field subject to tangent boundary conditions. Here we consider the case of a rectangular prism. For configurations with…
We have studied the nucleation and the physical properties of a -1/2 wedge disclination line near the free surface of a confined nematic liquid crystal. The position of the disclination line has been related to the material parameters…
We studied dielectric properties of a polar nematic phase (NF) sandwiched between two gold or ITO electrodes, serving as a cell surfaces. In bulk, NF is expected to exhibit a Goldstone mode (phason), because polarization can uniformly…
Advent of nematic liquid crystals flows have attracted renewed attention in view of microfluidic transport phenomena. Among various transport processes, electroosmosis stands as one of the efficient flow actuation method through narrow…
We investigate the tight packing of nematic polymers inside a confining hard sphere. We model the polymer {\sl via} the continuum Frank elastic free energy augmented by a simple density dependent part as well as by taking proper care of the…
A free-energy functional that contains both the symmetry conserved and symmetry broken parts of the direct pair correlation function has been used to investigate the freezing of a system of hard spheres into crystalline and amorphous…
Expressions are obtained for force and couple densities and stress tensors in macroscopic models for nematic liquid crystals subjected to electric fields. The coupling between the liquid crystal orientational properties and the electric…
We use linear stability analysis and hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the dynamical behaviour of an active nematic confined in a channel made of viscoelastic material. We find that the quiescent, ordered active nematic is…
We describe a general model for the free energy function for a homogeneous medium of mutually interacting molecules, based on the formalism for a biaxial nematic liquid crystal set out by Katriel {\em et al.} (1986) in an influential paper…
We examine the dynamics of a compressible active nematic liquid crystal on a frictional substrate. When frictional damping dominates over viscous dissipation, we eliminate flow in favor of active stresses to obtain a minimal dynamical model…
In this work a method is proposed for computing step free energies for faceted solid-liquid interfaces based on atomistic simulations. The method is demonstrated in an application to (111) interfaces in elemental Si, modeled with the…
We investigate theoretically the morphology of a thin nematic film adsorbed at flat substrate patterned by stripes with alternating aligning properties, normal and tangential respectively. We construct a simple "exactly-solvable" effective…
Free energy of crystal phases is commonly evaluated by thermodynamic integration (TDI) along a reversible path that involves an external potential. A persistent problem in this method is that a significant hysteresis is observed due to…
Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
The theory of elastic interaction of micron size axially symmetric colloidal particles immersed into confined nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. General formulas are obtained for the self energy of one colloidal particle and…
Free interfaces of liquid crystals tend to minimise both capillarity and anchoring forces. Here we study nematic films in planar and radial geometries with antagonistic anchoring boundary conditions and one deformable interface. Assuming a…
We present a detailed analysis of the free energy surface of a well characterized rigid model for water in supercooled states. We propose a functional form for the liquid free energy, supported by recent theoretical predictions [Y.…