Related papers: Liquid crystal cells with "dirty" substrates
Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…
Biological processes such as embryogenesis, wound healing and cancer progression, crucially rely on the ability of epithelial cells to coordinate their mechanical activity over length scales order of magnitudes larger than the typical…
The origin of rigidity in disordered materials is an outstanding open problem in statistical physics. Previously, a class of 2D cellular models has been shown to undergo a rigidity transition controlled by a mechanical parameter that…
Recent studies on confined crystals of charged colloidal particles are reviewed, both in equilibrium and out of equilibrium. We focus in particular on direct comparisons of experiments (light scattering and microscopy) with lattice sum…
Keeping in mind the experimental results that indicate local lattice distortions, charge and spin orderings, we have developed a phenomenological approach which allows us to describe the electronic phase diagram of cuprates and related…
Using classical density functional theory (DFT) the effect of bringing a liquid crystal (LC) into contact with a porous substrate or matrix is investigated. The DFT used is a combination of the Onsager approximation to evaluate the excess…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
The paper is concerned with various issues surrounding the mathematical description of defects in models of liquid crystals, drawing on experience from solid mechanics. The roles played by a suitable choice of function space and by the…
We study numerically how multiple deformable capsules squeeze into a constriction. This situation is largely encountered in microfluidic chips designed to manipulate living cells, which are soft entities. We use fully three-dimensional…
The ability of cells to reorganize in response to external stimuli is important in areas ranging from morphogenesis to tissue engineering. Elongated cells can co-align due to steric effects, forming states with local order. We show that…
We show that a point process of hard spheres exhibits long-range orientational order. This process is designed to be a random perturbation of a three-dimensional lattice that satisfies a specific rigidity property, examples include the FCC…
Several recent imaging experiments access the equilibrium density profiles of interacting particles confined to a two-dimensional substrate. When these particles are in a fluid phase, we show that such data yields precise information…
The paper continues a series of publications devoted to the 3D nonlinear localized coherent structures on the surface of vertically falling liquid films. The work is primarily focussed on experimental investigations. We study: (i)…
The world of two-dimensional crystals is of great significance for the design and study of structural and functional materials with novel properties. The world of two-dimensional crystals is of great significance for the design and study of…
Understanding the rolling and adhesion behavior of a cell on the vascular surface under viscous shear flow is important to better understand many biological processes. One of the important examples is the adhesion of the leukocytes onto…
We consider binary liquid mixtures near their critical consolute points and exposed to geometrically flat but chemically structured substrates. The chemical contrast between the various substrate structures amounts to opposite local…
Eukaryotic cells maintain their inner order by a hectic process of distillation of molecular factors taking place on the surface of their lipid membranes. To understand the properties of this molecular sorting process, a physical model of…
Plane wave density functional theory codes generally assume periodicity in all three dimensions. This causes difficulties when studying charged systems, for instance energies per unit cell become infinite, and, even after being renormalised…
A theoretical analysis is presented of a nematic liquid crystal confined between substrates pat- terned with squares that promote vertical and planar alignment. Two approaches are used to eluci- date the behavior across a wide range of…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…