Related papers: Blue-phase-polymer-templated nematic with sub-mill…
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…
This work demonstrates a fast thermo-optic switching mechanism on silicon nitride on insulator platform leveraging parity-time symmetry breaking. The cladding-free design enables low-loss optical propagation in a partially metal-covered…
The electronic nematic phase occurs when the point-group symmetry of the lattice structure is broken, due to electron-electron interactions. We study a model for the nematic phase on a square lattice with emphasis on the phase transition…
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…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit nanosecond electro-optic response to an applied electric field which modifies the degree of orientational order without realigning the molecular orientation. However, this nanosecond electrically-modified…
We study the formation of an electronic nematic phase characterized by a broken point-group symmetry in interacting fermion systems within the weak coupling theory. As a function of interaction strength and chemical potential, the phase…
Motivated by recently discovered unusual properties of bulk nematic elastomers, we study a phase diagram of liquid-crystalline polymerized phantom membranes, focusing on in-plane nematic order. We predict that such membranes should…
In this study, we demonstrate that when a ferroelectric nematic is confined between two glass plates coated with ionic polymers, a modulated phase emerges in a narrow temperature range between the nematic and ferroelectric nematic phases.…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
The twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase is a recent addition to the nematic (N) phases of liquid crystals (LCs). A net polar order in the Ntb phase under an external electric field was predicted in several recent theoretical studies but yet to…
Nematic elastomers with a locked-in anisotropy direction exhibit semi-soft elastic response characterized by a plateau in the stress-strain curve in which stress does not change with strain. We calculate the global phase diagram for a…
We study numerically the thermodynamic properties of the spin nematic phases in a magnetic field in the spin-1 bilinear-biquadratic model. When the field is applied, the phase transition temperature once goes up and then decreases rapidly…
The functionalities of a wide range of optical and opto-electronic devices are based on resonance effects and active tuning of the amplitude and wavelength response is often essential. Plasmonic nanostructures are an efficient way to create…
We use an infinite-range Maier-Saupe model, with two sets of local quadrupolar variables and restricted orientations, to investigate the global phase diagram of a coupled system of two nematic subsystems. The free energy and the equations…
We present polarization-independent optical shutters with a sub-millisecond switching time. The approach utilizes dual-frequency nematics doped with a dichroic dye. Two nematic cells with orthogonal alignment are driven simultaneously by a…
Conventional nonpolar nematic liquid crystals, widely known for their successful display applications, are not well-suited for fast electro-optical switching because of the slow (milliseconds) field-off relaxation of the director. In this…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit a fast optical response when the applied electric field modifies the degree of order but does not change the direction of molecular orientation. The effect requires a relatively high electric field, on the…
We present experimental studies of nanosecond electric modification of the order parameter (NEMOP) in a variety of nematic materials with negative dielectric anisotropy. The study demonstrates that NEMOP enables a large amplitude of fast…
We investigate experimentally the dynamic phase transition of a two-dimensional active nematic layer interfaced with a passive liquid crystal. Under a temperature ramp that leads to the transition of the passive liquid into a highly…
Liquid crystalline polymers are materials of considerable scientific interest and technological value to society [1-3]. An important subset of such materials exhibit rubber-like elasticity; these can combine the remarkable optical…