Related papers: Shaping thin nematic films with competing boundary…

By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…

The structure of a molecular liquid, in both the nematic liquid crystalline and isotropic phases, around a cylindrical macroparticle, is studied using density functional theory. In the nematic phase the structure of the fluid is highly…

An equilibrium phase diagram for the shape of compressively strained free-hanging films is developed by total strain energy minimization. For small strain gradients {\Delta}{\epsilon}, the film wrinkles, while for sufficiently large…

The shape of materials is often subject to a number of geometric constraints that limit the size of the system or fix the structure of its boundary. In soft and biological materials, however, these constraints are not always hard, but are…

We explore reshaping of nematoelastic films upon imbibing an isotropic solvent under conditions when isotropic and nematic phases coexist. The structure of the interphase boundary is computed taken into account the optimal nematic…

The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…

Various director configurations of a nematic liquid crystal, confined in a toroidal volume and subject to an external magnetic field, were evaluated numerically by performing finite element calculations in three dimensions. The equilibrium…

In the context of finite elasticity, we propose plate models describing the spontaneous bending of nematic elastomer thin films due to variations along the thickness of the nematic order parameters. Reduced energy functionals are deduced…

Using laser tweezers and fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with strong tangential surface anchoring. The…

We present the first calculations of the pressure tensor profile in the vicinity of the planar interface between isotropic liquid and nematic liquid crystal, using Onsager's density functional theory and computer simulation. When the liquid…

We derive a F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n-type constitutive model for solid liquid crystalline plates where the nematic director may or may not rotate freely relative to the elastic network. To obtain the reduced two-dimensional model, we…

When a flexible plate is peeled off a thin and soft elastic film bonded to a rigid support, uniformly spaced fingering patterns develop along their line of contact. While, the wavelength of these patterns depends only on the thickness of…

We consider the effective pseudo-Casimir interaction forces mediated by a nematic liquid-crystalline film bounded by two planar surfaces, one of which imposes a random (disordered) distribution of the preferred anchoring axis in the…

Recently Biscari, DiCarlo and Turzi ["Anisotropic wave propagation in nematic liquid crystals", to appear (arXiv:1311.1802)] proposed a theory for nematoacustics which models nematic liquid crystals as nematic elastomers with molecular…

In this Letter we investigate the rupture instability of thin liquid films by means of a bifurcation analysis in the vicinity of the short-scale instability threshold. The rupture time estimate obtained in closed form as a function of the…

In this paper we introduce a variational model for the study of multilayer films that allows for the treatment of both coherent and incoherent interfaces between layers. The model is designed in the framework of the theory of Stress Driven…

Density functional theory is used to study colloidal hard-rod fluids near an individual right-angled wedge or edge as well as near a hard wall which is periodically patterned with rectangular barriers. The Zwanzig model, in which the…

Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…

We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on a variational formulation of nematodynamics. Extending our previous work, we consider a general setup which incorporates dielectric anisotropy of the liquid-crystalline matrix…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…