Related papers: Liquid crystal films on curved surfaces: An entrop…
We find in a model system of thermotropic liquid crystals that the translational diffusion coefficient parallel to the director $D_{\parallel}$ first increases and then decreases as temperature drops through the nematic phase, and this…
It is well-known that the liquid properties in a strongly confined system can be very different from their ordinary behaviors in an extended system, due to the competition between the thermal energy and the interaction energy. Here we show…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
We experimentally investigate the nature of 2D phase transitions in a quasi-2D granular fluid. Using a surface decorated with periodically spaced dimples we observe interfacial tension between coexisting liquid and crystal phases.…
We present Monte Carlo simulations on a lattice system that displays a first order phase transition between a disordered phase (liquid) and an ordered phase (crystal). The model is augmented by an interaction that simulates the effect of…
In an attempt to quantitatively characterize the recently observed slow dynamics in the isotropic and nematic phase of liquid crystals, we investigate the single-particle orientational dynamics of rodlike molecules across the…
We report the phase diagram of two-dimensional hard ellipses as obtained from replica exchange Monte Carlo simulations. The replica exchange is implemented by expanding the isobaric ensemble in pressure. The phase diagram shows four…
This paper aims to elucidate the role of interface energy anisotropy in orientation selection during nucleation of new grains in a polycrystalline film growth. An assessment of (heterogeneous) nucleation probability as function of…
We present a grand canonical Monte Carlo simulation study of the phase diagram of a Lennard-Jones fluid adsorbed in a fractal and highly porous aerogel. The gel environment is generated from an off-lattice diffusion limited cluster-cluster…
We show theoretically that thermomechanical effects in dye-doped nematic liquid crystals when illuminated by laser beams, can become important and lead to molecular reorientation at intensities substantially lower than that needed for…
We simulate antiferromagnetic thin films. Dipole-dipole and antiferromagnetic exchange interactions as well as uniaxial and quadrupolar anisotropies are taken into account. Various phases unfold as the corresponding parameters, J, D and C,…
Controlling the anchoring of liquid crystal molecules at an interface with a water solution influences the entire organization of the underlying liquid crystal phase, which is crucial for many applications. The simplest way to stabilize…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
We study both theoretically and experimentally switching dynamics in surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal cells with asymmetric boundary conditions. In these cells the bounding surfaces are treated differently to produce…
We study the critical properties of a two--dimensional Ising model with competing ferromagnetic exchange and dipolar interactions, which models an ultra-thin magnetic film with high out--of--plane anisotropy in the monolayer limit. We…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
Close to a solid surface, the properties of a fluid deviate significantly from their bulk values. In this context, we study the surface adsorption profiles of a symmetric binary liquid confined to a slit pore by means of molecular dynamics…
Fibers of bent-core liquid crystals present an internal structure of a rolled smectic layer and can be used as optical waveguides. We used a field-theoretical Monte Carlo simulation to analyze the internal configuration of such fibers as a…
We introduce a model for a fluid of polydisperse rounded hard rectangles where the length and width of the rectangular core are fixed, while the roundness is taken into account by the convex envelope of a disk displaced along the perimeter…
When captured by a flat nematic-isotropic interface, colloidal particles can be dragged by it. As a result spatially periodic structures may appear, with the period depending on a particle mass, size, and interface…