Related papers: Liquid crystals boojum-colloids
Liquid crystalline defects in 3D can be viewed as geometric spinors, whose emergent properties are reminiscent of those of topological excitations in quantum condensed matter, such as Majorana quasiparticles. However, it is unclear how deep…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles is a promising avenue to control the shape and dynamics of larger aggregates. However, achieving the necessary fine control over the dynamics and specificity of the bonds between such particles remains a…
Low-density "equilibrium" gels that consist of a percolated, kinetically arrested network of colloidal particles and are resilient to aging can be fabricated by restricting the number of effective bonds that form between the colloids.…
At high area fractions, monolayers of colloidal dimer particles form a degenerate crystal (DC) structure in which the particle lobes occupy triangular lattice sites while the particles are oriented randomly along any of the three lattice…
The dynamical arrest of attractive colloidal particles into out-of-equilibrium structures, known as gelation, is central to biophysics, materials science, nanotechnology, and food and cosmetic applications, but a complete understanding is…
Three-dimensional (3D) simulations of the structure of liquid crystal (LC) torons, topologically protected distortions of the LC director field, under material flows are rare but essential in microfluidic applications. Here, we show that…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
Using numerical simulations we study the slow dynamics of a colloidal hard-sphere fluid adsorbed in a matrix of disordered hard-sphere obstacles. We calculate separately the contributions to the single-particle dynamic correlation functions…
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
We present results of Monte-Carlo simulations for finite 2D single and bilayer systems. Strong Coulomb correlations lead to arrangement of particles in configurations resembling a crystal lattice. For binary layers, there exists a…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
Anisotropic fluids, such as nematic liquid crystals, can form non-spherical equilibrium shapes known as tactoids. Predicting the shape of these structures as a function of material parameters is challenging and paradigmatic of a broader…
Complex behavior in glassforming liquids is associated with formation of a mosaic of different structures. Using bond order parameters together with topological characteristics of the bond network, we show that in the mosaic of crystalline…
Dipolar quantum gases, encompassing atoms and molecules with significant dipole moments, exhibit unique long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions (DDI), distinguishing them from systems dominated by short-range contact…
When colloidal particles are vertically confined to a gap of between 1.3-1.6 particle diameters, they pack into buckled crystals of particles in either "up" or "down" states. Neighboring particles tend to occupy opposite states, analogous…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Structural defects are ubiquitous in condensed matter, and not always a nuisance. For example, they underlie phenomena such as Anderson localization and hyperuniformity, and they are now being exploited to engineer novel materials. Here, we…
Using controlled spinodal decomposition, we have created a fluid-bicontinuous structure stabilized by colloidal particles. We present confocal microscopy studies of these structures and their variation with kinetic pathway. Our studies…
A theoretical study of the structure formation observed very recently [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 128303 (2003)] in binary colloids is presented. In our model solely the dipole-dipole interaction of the particles is considered,…