Related papers: Shape and Chirality Transitions in Off-Axis Twist …
A state of matter in which molecules show a long-range orientational order and no positional order is called a nematic liquid crystal. The best known and most widely used (for example, in modern displays) is the uniaxial nematic, with the…
Vertically aligned mono-domain nematic liquid crystal elastomers contract when heated. If a temperature gradient is applied across the width of such a cantilever, inhomogeneous strain distribution leads to bending motion. We modelled the…
A theoretical analysis of the effect of force and torque on spontaneously twisted, fluctuating elastic ribbons is presented. We find that when a filament with a straight center line and a spontaneously twisted noncircular cross section is…
Noncollinear antiferromagnets offer much promise for antiferromagnetic spintronics and neuromorphic applications with a plethora of functional properties surpassing many competing magnetic systems. Films grown on mismatched substrates may…
We consider geometric constraints for the addition of carbon atoms to the rim of a growing nanotube. The growth of a tube proceeds through the conversion of dangling bonds from armchair to zigzag and vice versa. We find that the growth rate…
Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs) are active materials that are of interest due to their programmable response to various external stimuli such as light and heat. When exposed to these stimuli, the anisotropy in the response of the…
Crystalline sheets (e.g., graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides) liberated from a substrate are a paradigm for materials at criticality because flexural phonons can fluctuate into the third dimension. Although studies of static…
We have studied the nucleation and the physical properties of a -1/2 wedge disclination line near the free surface of a confined nematic liquid crystal. The position of the disclination line has been related to the material parameters…
Magnetic skyrmions form in chiral multilayers from the shrinking or fission of elongated stripe textures. Here we report an experimental and theoretical study of the temperature dependence of this stripe-to-skyrmion transition in…
Using molecular simulations and classical density functional theory, we study the liquid-crystalline phase behaviour of a series of bent rod-like mesogens with a controlled degree of chirality introduced through a twist at the centre of the…
We derive a reduced quasi-one-dimensional theory of geometrically frustrated elastic ribbons. Expressed in terms of geometric properties alone, it applies to ribbons over a wide range of scales, allowing the study of their elastic…
We present a simplified molecular model of mesogenic dimers consisting of two identical uniaxial mesogenic cores separated by a fixed-length spacer and allowed to assume only two, statistically equivalent, conformations which are non-planar…
The actions of cut applied to the elastic system cause relative displacements tool/part, which induce a rise in the temperature in the components of the machine tools, its environment, the system-tools-part and generate vibrations. The…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) can undergo large reversible contractions along their nematic director upon heating or illumination. A spatially patterned director within a flat LCE sheet thus encodes a pattern of contraction on heating,…
Ribbons are a class of slender structures whose length, width, and thickness are widely separated from each other. This scale separation gives a ribbon unusual mechanical properties in athermal macroscopic settings, e.g. it can bend without…
Spin chirality provides a powerful route to control magnetic and topological phases in materials, enabling next-generation spintronic and quantum technologies. Coplanar noncollinear antiferromagnets with Kagome lattice spin geometries host…
The viscosity of glass-forming liquids increases by many orders of magnitude if their temperature is lowered by a mere factor of 2-3 [1,2]. Recent studies suggest that this widespread phenomenon is accompanied by spatially heterogeneous…
A dynamical model is presented for chiral change in DNA molecules. The model is an extension of the conventional elastic model which incorporates the structure of base pairs and uses a spinor representation for the DNA configuration…
A range of monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers containing differing proportions of photo-isomerisable mesogenic moieties, which turn from a rod-like to a kinked shape upon ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, was studied. Depending on the…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…