Related papers: Morphology of Nematic and Smectic Vesicles
Rod-shaped colloids with attractive tips can form linear aggregates that may subsequently undergo hierarchical self-assembly into nematic fluids. Inspired by recent modelling efforts on chromonic liquid crystals, composed of discotic…
We demonstrate scaffolding of plasmonic nanoparticles by topological defects induced by colloidal microspheres to match their surface boundary conditions with a uniform far-field alignment in a liquid crystal host. Displacing energetically…
We review the impact of tetrahedral order on the macroscopic dynamics of bent-core liquid crystals. We discuss tetrahedral order comparing with other types of orientational order, like nematic, polar nematic, polar smectic, and active polar…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
An exact description is provided of an almost spherical fluid vesicle with a fixed area and a fixed enclosed volume locally deformed by external normal forces bringing two nearby points on the surface together symmetrically. The conformal…
Recent theoretical research has developed a general framework to understand director deformations and modulated phases in nematic liquid crystals. In this framework, there are four fundamental director deformation modes: twist, bend, splay,…
Many physical systems involve two types of orientational order, which are coupled together. For example, ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals have coupled polar and nematic order, and tilted hexatic phases have coupled polar and hexatic…
We report a molecular-dynamics simulation of a single-component system of particles interacting via a spherically symmetric potential that is found to form, upon cooling from a liquid state, a low-density porous crystalline phase. Its…
Biological membranes are host to proteins and molecules which may form domain-like structures resulting in spatially-varying material properties. Vesicles with such heterogeneous membranes can exhibit intricate shapes at equilibrium and…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
Shear-flow-induced structure formation in surfactant-water mixtures is investigated numerically using a meshless-membrane model in combination with a particle-based hydrodynamics simulation approach for the solvent. At low shear rates,…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
Experimental investigations of hydrophobic/water interfaces often return controversial results, possibly due to the unknown role of gas accumulation at the interfaces. Here, during advanced atomic force microscopy of the initial evolution…
Despite the wide existence of vesicles in living cells as well as their important applications like drug-delivery, the underlying mechanism of vesicle fusion/fission remains under debate. Here, we develop a constrained self-consistent field…
The disk-to-vesicle transition of a fluid membrane with no spontaneous curvature is well described by the competition between edge line and curvature energies. However, the transition of asymmetric membranes with spontaneous curvatures is…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
We systematize and extend the description of vesicle growth and shape change using linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics. By restricting the study to shape changes from spheres to axisymmetric ellipsoids, we are able to give a consistent…
Directional media, such as nematic liquid crystals and ferromagnets, are characterized by their topologically stabilized defects in directional order. In nematics, boundary conditions and surface-treated inclusions often create complex…
Using particle-resolved molecular-dynamics simulations, we compute the phase diagram for soft repulsive spherocylinders confined on the surface of a sphere. While crystal (K), smectic (Sm), and isotropic (I) phases exhibit a stability…
Cellular uptake of nanoplastics is instrumental in their environmental accumulation and transfer to humans through the food chain. Despite extensive studies using spherical plastic nanoparticles, the influence of the morphological…