Related papers: Thermodynamic Modelling of Phase Equilibrium in Na…
Recent experiments have reported that ferroelectric nanoparticles have drastic effects on nematic liquid crystals--increasing the isotropic-nematic transition temperature by about 5 K, and greatly increasing the sensitivity to applied…
The phase-field-crystal model is used to access the structure and thermodynamics of interfaces between two coexisting liquid crystalline phases in two spatial dimensions. Depending on the model parameters there is a variety of possible…
The quantitative phase-field approach has been adapted to model solidification in the presence of Metal Matrix Nanocomposites (MMNCs) in a single-component liquid. Nanoparticles of fixed size and shape are represented by additional fields.…
We analyze a mean-field model for mixtures involving biaxial nematogens and dipolar nanoparticles, taking into account orientational and isotropic pair interactions between nematogens, but also orientational nematogen-nanoparticle…
A continuum theory is employed to numerically study the equilibrium orientation and defect structures of a circular cylindrical particle with flat ends under a homeotropic anchoring condition in a uniform nematic medium. Different aspect…
We consider the effects of polydispersity on isotropic-nematic phase equilibria in thermotropic liquid crystals, using a Maier-Saupe theory with factorized interactions. A sufficient spread (approx. 50%) in the interaction strengths of the…
Recent experiments on mixed liquid crystals have highlighted the hugely significant role of ferromagnetic nanoparticle impurities in defining the nematic-smectic-A phase transition point. Structured around a Flory-Huggins free energy of…
We discuss thermotropic nematic liquid crystals in the mean-field regime. In the first part of this article, we rigorously carry out the mean-field limit of a system of $N$ rod-like particles as $N\to\infty$, which yields an effective…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
Crystallization of supersaturated liquids usually starts by heterogeneous nucleation. Mounting evidence shows that even homogeneous nucleation in simple liquids takes place in two steps; first a dense amorphous precursor forms, and the…
A theoretical model of shape-anisometric particles embedded in a cubic lattice is formulated for binary mixtures combining rod-like, plate-like and spherical particles. The model aims at providing a tool for the prediction and…
We report a novel multi-scale simulation methodology to quantitatively predict the thermodynamic behaviour of polymer mixtures, that exhibit phases with broken orientational symmetry. Our system consists of a binary mixture of oligomers and…
In this work, we study the nematic-isotropic phase transition based on the dynamics of the Landau--De Gennes theory of liquid crystals. At the critical temperature, the Landau--De Gennes bulk potential favors the isotropic phase and nematic…
We present thermodynamic relationships between the free energy of the phase-field crystal (PFC) model and thermodynamic state variables for bulk phases under hydrostatic pressure. This relationship is derived based on the thermodynamic…
We introduce a new class of non-isothermal models describing the evolution of nematic liquid crystals and prove their consistency with the fundamental laws of classical Thermodynamics. The resulting system of equations captures all…
The stability of liquid crystal phases in presence of small amount of non-mesogenic impurities is of general interest for a large spectrum of technological applications and in the theories of binary mixtures. Starting from the known phase…
A systematic analysis of defect textures in facetted nanoparticles with polygonal configurations embedded in a nematic matrix is performed using the Landau-de Gennes model, homeotropic strong anchoring in a square domain with uniform…
In equilibrium hard-rod fluids, and in effective hard-rod descriptions of anisotropic soft-particle systems, the transition from the isotropic (I) phase to the nematic phase (N) is observed above the rod aspect ratio L/D = 3.70 as predicted…
A system of identical particles interacting through an isotropic potential that allows for two preferred interparticle distances is numerically studied. When the parameters of the interaction potential are adequately chosen, the system…
We combine experiments, theory, and simulations to investigate the coexistence of nonequilibrium phases emerging from interacting colloidal particles that are electrokinetically propelled in a nematic liquid crystal solvent. We directly…