Related papers: Flexoelectricity and pattern formation in nematic …
We report experimental and theoretical results on the flexoelectric instability and crossover between flexoelectric domains and electroconvection in a hybrid aligned nematic MBBA under d.c. voltage. At threshold a spatially periodic…
Pattern forming instabilities induced by ultralow frequency sinusoidal voltages were studied in a rod-like nematic liquid crystal by microscopic observations and simultaneous electric current measurements. Two pattern morphologies,…
The stability of the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal confined between two coaxial cylinders is analysed when a radial electric field is applied and the flexoelectric effect is taken into account. The threshold for…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
We develop a lattice model for the splay flexoelectric effect in nematic liquid crystals. In this model, each lattice site has a spin representing the local molecular orientation, and the interaction between neighboring spins represents…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
The recent discovery of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases marks a major breakthrough in soft matter research. An intermediate phase, often observed between the nonpolar and the ferroelectric nematic phase, shows a distinct…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
Mesogenic dimers in the twist-bend nematic phase exhibit much higher flexoelectric polarization than in their uniform nematic phase. In order to theoretically investigate this data, we extend the symmetry based linear elastic theory of the…
The flexoelectric (FE) effect provides a linear coupling between electric polarization and orientational deformation in liquid crystals. It influences many electrooptical phenomena and it is used in some bistable nematic devices. A…
Polar nematic liquid crystals have two special features, compared with conventional nematic liquid crystals. First, because of flexoelectricity, the combination of polar order and splay reduces the free energy. Second, because of…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
The effect of superimposed ac and dc electric fields on the formation of electroconvection and flexoelectric patterns in nematic liquid crystals was studied. For selected ac frequencies an extended standard model of the electro-hydrodynamic…
We investigate a number of complex patterns driven by the electro-convection instability in a planarly aligned layer of a nematic liquid crystal. They are traced back to various secondary instabilities of the ideal roll patterns bifurcating…
We report on a novel method of dynamically controlling the boundary conditions at the surface of a nematic liquid crystal using a surface flexoelectric effect. By moving the surface directors we show that one is able to manipulate defects…
The flexoelectric conversion of mechanical to electrical energy in nematic liquid crystals is investigated using continuum theory. Since the electrical energy produced cannot exceed the mechanical energy supplied, and vice-versa, upper…
We investigate the possibility of a striped inhomoegenous phase occurring as an electronic system with an order parameter linearly coupled to the elastic degrees of freedom is tuned through the electronic phase transition. We find that in…
We consider a phenomenological continuum model for an active nematic fluid and show a universal, model independent, instability which renders the homogeneous nematic state unstable to order fluctuations. Using numerical and analytic tools…
The recently discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have been reported to exhibit very large dielectric permittivity values. Here, we report a systematic investigation of the dielectric behavior of a prototypical ferroelectric…