Related papers: Liquid crystals boojum-colloids
The possibility to induce demixing in a colloidal mixture by adding small polymers, or other equivalent depletant agents, is theoretically investigated. By use of Mean Field Theory, suitably generalized to deal with short range effective…
We study cholesteric order in liquid crystal shells with planar degenerate anchoring. We observe that the bipolar and radial configurations intensively reported for bulk droplets have a higher degree of complexity when the liquid crystal is…
Most active colloid experiments are quasi-2D. Here a 3D density-matched solution of active particles propelled and aligned with an AC electric field uniquely facilitates measurement of short and long-range particle-wall interactions.…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
Using extensive Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of colloids immersed in a nematic liquid crystal we compute an effective interaction potential via the local nematic director field and its associated order parameter. The effective potential…
Placing colloidal particles in predesigned sites represents a major challenge of the current state-of-the-art colloidal science. Nematic liquid crystals with spatially varying director patterns represent a promising approach to achieve a…
Control of physical behaviors of nematic colloids and colloidal crystals has been demonstrated by tuning particle shape, topology, chirality and surface charging. However, the capability of altering physical behaviors of such soft matter…
The addition of enough non-adsorbing polymer to an otherwise stable colloidal suspension gives rise to a variety of phase behavior and kinetic arrest due to the depletion attraction induced between the colloids by the polymers. We report a…
We investigate the behavior of colloidal suspensions with different volume fractions confined between parallel walls under a range of steady shears. We model the particles using molecular dynamics (MD) with full hydrodynamic interactions…
Spontaneous onset of a low temperature topologically ordered phase in a 2-dimensional (2D) lattice model of uniaxial liquid crystal (LC) was debated extensively pointing to a suspected underlying mechanism affecting the RG flow near the…
We demonstrate a novel method of introducing point defects (mono and di-vacancies) in a confined mono-layer colloidal crystal by manipulating individual particles with optical tweezers. Digital video microscopy is used to study defect…
The binodals and the non-ergodicity lines of a binary mixture of hard sphere-like particles with large size ratio are computed for studying the interplay between dynamic arrest and phase separation in depletion-driven colloidal mixtures.…
The theory of elastic interaction of micron size axially symmetric colloidal particles immersed into confined nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. General formulas are obtained for the self energy of one colloidal particle and…
Understanding the out-of equilibrium behaviour of point defects in crystals, yields insights into the nature and fragility of the ordered state, as well as being of great practical importance. In some rare cases defects are spontaneously…
We propose a simple theoretical model which explains a formation of dipolar 2D and 3D colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal. Colloidal particles are treated as effective hard spheres interacting via their elastic dipole, quadrupole…
Previous experiments have shown that spherical colloidal particles relax to equilibrium slowly after they adsorb to a liquid-liquid interface, despite the large interfacial energy gradient driving the adsorption. The slow relaxation has…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…
We simulate a colloidal particle (radius R) in a cholesteric liquid crystal (pitch p) with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The local defect structure evolves from a dipolar pair of surface defects (boojums) at…
The intricate interplay between colloidal particle shape and precisely engineered interaction potentials has paved the way for the discovery of unprecedented crystal structures in both two and three dimensions. Here, we make use of…
Correlations between electrons and the effective dimensionality are crucial factors that shape the properties of an interacting electron system. For example, the onsite Coulomb repulsion, U, may inhibit, or completely block the intersite…