Related papers: Stretchable liquid crystal blue phase gels
Kinetic barriers cause polymers to crystallize incompletely, into nanoscale lamellae interleaved with amorphous regions. As a result, crystalline polymers are full of crystal-melt interfaces, which dominate their physical properties. The…
We show theoretically that flexoelectricity stabilizes blue phases in chiral liquid crystals. Induced internal polarization reduces the elastic energy cost of splay and bend deformations surrounding singular lines in the director field. The…
We show that the mechanical effect of light on the orientational ordering of the crystalline axis of a mesophase can be used to control the dynamics of the optical response of liquid crystal infiltrated photonic structures. The…
Polarization dependence of opto-mechanical behavior of monodomain photochromic glassy liquid crystal (LC) polymers under polarized ultraviolet light (PUV) is studied. Trans-cis photo-isomerization is generally known to be most intense at…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
We show that micron-scale two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb microwells can significantly improve the stability of blue phase liquid crystals (BPLCs). Polymeric microwells made by direct laser writing improve various features of the blue phase…
Chiral nematic liquid crystals are one-dimensional photonic band-gap materials whose reflection wavelength can be well tuned by temperature, but only limited and irreversible tuning can be achieved by electric fields. In contrast, oblique…
Blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals offer a spectacular example of naturally occurring disclination line networks. Here we numerically solve the hydrodynamic equations of motion to investigate the response of three types of blue…
In liquid crystals, if flexoelectric couplings between polar order and director gradients are strong enough, the uniform nematic phase can become unstable to formation of a modulated polar phase. Previous theories have predicted two types…
This paper presents the design and experimental validation of a liquid crystal geometric phase hyperbolic lens (LCHL) with positive focal lengths for arbitrary circularly polarized light. Utilizing Pancharatnam-Berry phase modulation, the…
Stretched polymers with attractive interaction are studied in two and three dimensions. They are described by biased self-avoiding random walks with nearest neighbour attraction. The bias corresponds to opposite forces applied to the first…
Two new types of electro-optic effect that are linear in the applied electric field strength are theoretically predicted to exist in transparent dielectric crystals due to high order spatial dispersion. The first effect, which is quadratic…
Many promising approaches for designing interactions of synthetic materials with light involve solid optical monocrystals and nanofabricated photonic crystal structures with spatially periodic variations of refractive index. Although their…
Nematic liquid-crystal devices are a powerful tool to structure light in different degrees of freedom, both in classical and quantum regimes. Most of these devices exploit either the possibility of introducing a position-dependent phase…
We report large scale simulations of the blue phases of cholesteric liquid crystals. Our results suggest a structure for blue phase III, the blue fog, which has been the subject of a long debate in liquid crystal physics. We propose that…
Motivated by the need for new materials and green energy production and conversion processes, a class of mathematical models for liquid crystal elastomers integrated within a theoretical charge pump electrical circuit is considered. The…
The cubic blue phases of liquid crystals are fascinating and technologically promising examples of hierarchically structured soft materials, comprising ordered networks of defect lines (disclinations) within a liquid crystalline matrix. We…
Materials that exhibit high nonlinear optical (NLO) susceptibilities are considered as promising candidates for a wide range of photonic and electronic applications. Here we argue that the ferroelectric nematic (NF) materials have…
A binary mixture of ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLCs) was used for the design of a channel waveguide. The FLCs possess two important functionalities: a chromophore with a high hyperpolarizability $\beta$ and photoreactive groups. The…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are rubber-like solids that incorporate nematic mesogens (stiff rod-like molecules) as a part of their polymer chains. In recent years, isotropic-genesis, polydomain liquid crystal elastomers (I-PLCEs) has…