Related papers: Surface free energies for nematic shells
We study the effect of boundary rugosity in nematic liquid crystalline systems. We consider a highly general formulation of the problem, able to simultaneously deal with several liquid crystal theories. We use techniques of Gamma…
A model describing cell membranes as optimal shapes with regard to the $L^2$-deficit of their mean curvature to a given constant called spontaneous curvature is considered. It is shown that the corresponding energy functional is lower…
The dynamics of biological polymers, including proteins, RNA, and DNA, occur in very high-dimensional spaces. Many naturally-occurring polymers can navigate a vast phase space and rapidly find their lowest free energy (folded) state. Thus,…
We investigate the formation of polycrystalline structures in a class of particle systems. The atomistic energy is modeled as a sum of particle energies that favor atoms being locally isometric to a reference lattice. The discrete frame…
We consider free surface instabilities of films flowing on inverted substrates within the framework of lubrication approximation. We allow for the presence of fronts and related contact lines, and explore the role which they play in…
We develop an energetic model that captures the twisting behavior of spindle-shaped polymer microparticles with nematic ordering, which display remarkably different twisting behavior to ordinary nematics confined to spindles. We have…
When a material surface is functionalized so as to acquire some type of order, functionalization of which soft condensed matter systems have recently provided many interesting examples, the modeller faces an alternative. Either the order is…
The conformational free energy landscape of a system is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity of importance particularly in the study of soft matter and biological systems, in which the entropic contributions play a dominant role. While…
We report simulations of a continuum model for (apolar, flow aligning) active fluids in two dimensions. Both free and anchored boundary conditions are considered, at parallel confining walls that are either static or moving at fixed…
We study spreading dynamics of nematic liquid crystal droplets within the framework of the long-wave approximation. A fourth order nonlinear parabolic partial differential equation governing the free surface evolution is derived. The…
We study the equilibrium configuration of a nematic liquid crystal bounded by a rough surface. The wrinkling of the surface induces a partial melting in the degree of orientation. This softened region penetrates the bulk up to a length…
Using Monte Carlo simulation, we study a fluid of two-dimensional hard rods inside a small circular cavity bounded by a hard wall, from the dilute regime to the high-density, layering regime. Both planar and homeotropic anchoring of the…
The paper considers the general case of incompressible non-classical elasticity with small deformations and rotations. The thermodynamic stability is analysed for free energy density with three rotational degrees of freedom. Although the…
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a…
In this work, a theoretical study of phase equilibrium in mixtures of a calamitic nematic liquid crystal and hard spherical nanoparticles is presented. A mean-field thermodynamic model is used, where the interactions are considered to be…
Motivated by recently discovered unusual properties of bulk nematic elastomers, we study a phase diagram of liquid-crystalline polymerized phantom membranes, focusing on in-plane nematic order. We predict that such membranes should…
We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…
Using scaled-particle theory for binary mixtures of two-dimensional hard particles with rotational freedom, we analyse the stability of nematic phases and the demixing phase behaviour of a variety of mixtures, focussing on cases where at…
Surface energy is a fundamental property of materials and is particularly important in describing nanomaterials where atoms or molecules at the surface constitute a large fraction of the material. Traditionally, surface energy is considered…
Minimizing the elastic free energy of a thin sheet of nematic polymer network among smooth isometric immersions is the strategy purported by the mainstream theory. In this paper, we broaden the class of admissible spontaneous deformations:…