Related papers: Stretchable liquid crystal blue phase gels
The blue phases are observed in highly chiral liquid crystalline compositions that nascently organize into a three-dimensional, crystalline nanostructure. The periodicity of the unit cell lattice parameters is on the order of the wavelength…
Recent experiments have found that a mechanically distorted blue phase can exhibit a primary linear electro-optic (Pockels) effect [F. Castles \textit{et al}. Nature Mater. \textbf{13}, 817 (2014)]. Here it is shown that flexoelectricity…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
A promising approach to the fabrication of materials with nanoscale features is the transfer of liquid-crystalline structure to polymers. However, this has not been achieved in systems with full three-dimensional periodicity. Here we…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
Blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) has important applications in adaptive lenses and phase modulators due to its polarization-independent property. During our efforts for development of the new materials, we found a novel phenomenology of…
Artificially engineered geometric phase optical elements may have tunable photonic functionalities owing to sensitivity to external fields, as is the case for liquid crystals based devices. However, a liquid crystal technology combining…
Liquid crystal elastomers are special cross-linked polymer materials combining the large elastic deformability of elastomers with the orientational orders of liquid crystals. This model exhibits markedly different phenomena than the liquid…
Blue phase liquid crystals are not usually considered to exhibit a flexoelectrooptic effect, due to the polar nature of flexoelectric switching and the cubic or amorphous structure of blue phases. Here, we derive the form of the…
A scattering polarizer is created by subjecting a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film to tensile strain. The optomechanical properties of the film are investigated by simultaneously measuring the stress-strain and polarization…
Photonic metamaterials with properties unattainable in base materials are already beginning to revolutionize optical component design. However, their exceptional characteristics are often static, as artificially engineered into the material…
We show that non-entangled polymers display an elastic-like behaviour at a macroscopic scale (probed at some 0.100 mm thickness) up to at least hundred degrees above the glass transition temperature. This observation, found under…
This paper reviews the research work on the liquid crystalline (LC) polymer vesicles (polymersomes), where the thermotropic nematic and smectic phases are displayed in the lyotropic bilayer polymer membrane. LC polymersomes possess the…
Photomechanical liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are responsive polymers that can convert light directly into mechanical deformation. This unique feature makes these materials an attractive candidate for soft actuators capable of remote and…
Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid-solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of…
New theoretical approaches have been developed for studying and quantitatively describing the elastic properties of cubic blue phases in cholesteric liquid crystals. Within the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory, using the simplest…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubber-like solids with liquid crystalline mesogens (stiff, rod-like molecules) incorporated either into the main chain or as a side chain of the polymer. These solids display a range of unusual…
Recent experimental realization of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases stimulated material development and numerous experimental studies of these new phases, guided by their fundamental and applicative interest. In this…
The stretchability of polymeric materials is critical to many applications such as stretchable electronics and soft robotics, yet the stretchability of conventional cross-linked linear polymers is limited by the entanglements between…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…