Related papers: Elasticity-Dependent Self-assembly of Micro-Templa…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
We study ionic and mass transport in a liquid crystalline fluid film in its nematic phase under an applied electrostatic field. Both analytic and numerical solutions are given for some prototypical configurations of interest in…
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…
Liquid-liquid crystal phase separation (LLCPS) occurs in many industrial and biological settings. To date the states of the separated condensed liquid crystals have been found to be nematic, columnar, or smectic phases. Interestingly, when…
Colloidal particles suspended in liquid crystals can exhibit various effective anisotropic interactions that can be tuned and utilized in self-assembly processes. We simulate a two-dimensional system of hard disks suspended in a solution of…
We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…
Liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) has been intensively utilized in 4D printing techniques to fabricate smart structures with reversible actuation on the basis of appropriate alignment of liquid crystal (LC) molecules. As a non-contact…
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…
A nonlinear viscoelastic theory of nematodynamic type is developed for nematic liquid crystalline (LC) semi-flexible polymers. A measure of transient elastic strain due to the change in length of macromolecular strands under stress, and the…
We consider a mathematical model that describes the flow of a Nematic Liquid Crystal (NLC) film placed on a flat substrate, across which a spatially-varying electric potential is applied. Due to their polar nature, NLC molecules interact…
By analyzing elastic theory for nematic liquid crystals, we distinguish three regimes of elastic constants. In one regime, the Ericksen inequalities are satisfied, and the ground state of the director field is uniform. In a second regime,…
We present experiments where anisometric colloidal microparticles dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal cell with homeotropic anchoring conditions are dynamically assembled by means of liquid-crystal-enabled electrophoresis (LCEEP) using an…
The optical properties of liquid crystals serve as the basis for display, diagnostic, and sensing technologies. Such properties are generally controlled by relying on electric fields. In this work, we investigate the effects of microfluidic…
We report filling-fraction dependent dielectric spectroscopy measurements on the relaxation dynamics of the rod-like nematogen 7CB condensed in 13 nm silica nanochannels. In the film-condensed regime, a slow interface relaxation dominates…
Precise manipulation of shape-morphing responsive materials is crucial for applications in soft robotics and adaptive structures. While notable precision has been achieved in thin two-dimensional sheets, an accurate volumetric…
We study the chiral symmetry breaking and metastability of confined nematic lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC) with and without chiral dopants. The isotropic-nematic coexistence phase of the LCLC renders two confining geometries:…
Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
We consider planar liquid crystal elastomers: two dimensional objects made of anisotropic responsive materials, that upon activation remain flat however change their planar shape. We derive a closed form, analytical solution based on the…
Physical properties of composite materials can be pre-engineered by controlling their structure and composition at the mesoscale. Yet, approaches for achieving this are limited and rarely scalable. We introduce a new breed of self-assembled…