Related papers: Behavior of colloidal particles at an air/nematic …
Concentrated colloidal suspensions are a well-tested model system which has a glass transition. Colloids are suspensions of small solid particles in a liquid, and exhibit glassy behavior when the particle concentration is high; the…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Via mechanisms not accessible at equilibrium, self-propelled particles can form phases with positional order, such as crystals, and with orientational order, such as polar flocks. However, the interplay between these two types of order…
A two-dimensional system of soft particles interacting via a two-length-scale potential is studied. Density functional theory and Brownian dynamics simulations reveal a fluid phase and two crystalline phases with different lattice spacing.…
The influence of a fluid-fluid interface on self-phoresis of chemically active, axially symmetric, spherical colloids is analyzed. Distinct from the studies of self-phoresis for colloids trapped at fluid interfaces or in the vicinity of…
The ordering of nanoparticles into predetermined configurations is of importance to the design of advanced technologies. In this work, we moderate the surface anchoring against the bulk elasticity of liquid crystals to dynamically shape…
When colloidal particles form a crystal phase on a spherical template, their packing is governed by the effective interaction between them and the elastic strain of bending the growing crystal. For example, if growth commences under…
We theoretically study the elastic deformation of a fluid membrane induced by an adhering spherical colloidal particle within the framework of a Helfrich energy. Based on a full optimization of the membrane shape we find a continuous…
Polymeric particles are strong candidates for designing artificial materials capable of emulating the complex twisting-based functionality observed in biological systems. In this letter, we provide the first detailed investigation of the…
By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…
The design of complex materials and the formation of specific patterns often arise from the properties of the individual building blocks. In this respect, colloidal systems offer a unique opportunity because nowadays they can be synthesized…
We study the interaction of small hydrophobic particles on the surface of an ultra-soft elastic gel, in which a small amount of elasticity of the medium balances the weights of the particles. The excess energy of the surface of the deformed…
We study the dynamics of a driven spherical colloidal particle moving in a fluid with a broken rotational symmetry. Using a nematic liquid crystal as a model, we demonstrate that when the applied force is not aligned along or perpendicular…
Field-induced assembly of colloidal particles into structures of desired configurations is extremely relevant from the viewpoint of producing field-assembled micro-swimmers and reconfigurable smart materials. However, the behaviour of…
Particles suspended in a viscous fluid circle in optical vortices generated by holographic optical-tweezer techniques [Curtis J E and Grier D G 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 133901]. We model this system and show that hydrodynamic interactions…
The onset of structural arrest and glass formation in a concentrated suspension of silica nanoparticles in a water-lutidine binary mixture near its consolute point is studied by exploiting the near-critical fluid degrees of freedom to…
The phase behavior of colloidal particles embedded in a binary fluid is influenced by wetting layers surrounding each particle. The free energy of the fluid film depends on its morphology, i.e., on size, shape and connectivity. Under rather…
Self-driven nanofluidic flow at the liquid-air interface is a non-intuitive phenomenon. This flow behaviour was not driven by classical pressure difference or evaporation only. Depending on the position of the nanofluidic pore we can…
We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…