Related papers: Flexoelectricity and pattern formation in nematic …
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
Systems involving nematic liquid crystals subjected to magnetic fields or electric fields are modeled using the Oseen-Frank macroscopic continuum theory, and general criteria are developed to assess the local stability of equilibrium…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal, in coexistence with its isotropic phase, in contact with a substrate patterned with rectangular grooves. In such a system, the nematic phase may fill the grooves without the occurrence of complete…
The common description of the electrical behavior of a nematic liquid crystal as an anisotropic dielectric medium with (weak) ohmic conductivity is extended to an electrodiffusion model with two active ionic species. Under appropriate, but…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials.…
Thin dielectric elastomers with compliant electrodes exhibit various types of instability under the action of electromechanical loading. Guided by the thermodynamically-based formulation of Fosdick and Tang (J. Elasticity 88, 255-297,…
Stability is an important and fruitful avenue of research for liquid crystal elastomers. At constant temperature, upon stretching, the homogeneous state of a nematic body becomes unstable, and alternating shear stripes develop at very low…
We analytically derive the elastic, dielectric, piezoelectric, and the flexoelectric phenomenological coefficients as functions of microscopic model parameters such as ionic positions and spring constants in the two-dimensional…
Ferroelectric nematic phases are a new class of polar fluids in which spontaneous polarization is directly coupled to the orientational order, providing unique opportunities for creating self-organized materils with spatially modulated…
A rectangular plate of dielectric elastomer exhibiting gradients of material properties through its thickness will deform inhomogeneously when a potential difference is applied to compliant electrodes on its major surfaces, because each…
Toroidal nematics are nematic liquid crystals confined within a circular torus and subject to planar degenerate anchoring on the boundary of the torus. They may be droplets floating in an isotropic environment or cavities carved out of a…
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…
Novel behavior in electroconvection (EC) has been detected in nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) under the condition of comparable timescales of the director relaxation and the period of the driving ac voltage. The studied NLCs exhibit standard…
We study the flat phase of nematic elastomer membranes with rotational symmetry spontaneously broken by in-plane nematic order. Such state is characterized by a vanishing elastic modulus for simple shear and soft transverse phonons. At…
Pattern formation in uniaxial polymeric liquid crystals is studied for different dynamic closure approximations. Using the principles of mesoscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamics in a mean-field approach, we derive a Fokker-Planck equation…
Fr\'eedericksz transitions in nematic liquid crystals are re-examined with a focus on differences between systems with magnetic fields and those with electric fields. A magnetic field can be treated as uniform in a liquid-crystal medium;…
The effect of superposed dc and ac applied voltages on two types of spatially periodic instabilities in nematic liquid crystals, flexoelectric domains (FD) and electroconvection (EC), was studied. The onset characteristics, threshold…
Electronic nematicity is widely observed in quantum materials with varying degrees of electronic correlation, manifesting through charge, spin, orbital, or superconducting degrees of freedom. A phenomenological model capable of describing…
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…