Related papers: Colloidal Particles at Chiral Liquid Crystal Inter…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
The active motion of phoretic colloids leads them to accumulate at boundaries and interfaces. Such an excess accumulation, with respect to their passive counterparts, makes the dynamics of phoretic colloids particularly sensitive to the…
Colloidal particles are often seen as big atoms that can be directly observed in real space. They are therefore playing an increasingly important role as model systems to study processes of interest in condensed matter physics such as…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
Colloidal particles at complex fluid interfaces and within films assemble to form ordered structures with high degrees of symmetry via interactions that include capillarity, elasticity, and other fields like electrostatic charge. Here we…
The ordering of nanoparticles into predetermined configurations is of importance to the design of advanced technologies. In this work, we moderate the surface anchoring against the bulk elasticity of liquid crystals to dynamically shape…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
The freezing of colloidal suspensions is encountered in many natural and engineering processes. It can be harnessed through a process known as ice templating, to produce porous materials and composites exhibiting unique functional…
For partially wetting, ellipsoidal colloids trapped at a fluid interface, their effective, interface--mediated interactions of capillary and fluctuation--induced type are analyzed. For contact angles different from 90$^o$, static interface…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
We study, using Monte Carlo simulations, the interaction between charged colloidal particles confined to the air-water interface. The dependence of force on ionic strength and counterion valence is explored. For 1:1 electrolyte, we find…
Colloidal particles are not simple rigid particles, in general an isolated particle is a system with many degrees of freedom in its own right, e.g., the counterions around a charged colloidal particle.The behaviour of model colloidal…
Liquid-liquid phase separation is ubiquitous in suspensions of nanoparticles, proteins and colloids. With a few notable exceptions, surface-tension-minimizing liquid droplets in bulk suspensions continuously coalesce, increasing in size…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
The progress of realizing colloidal structures mimicking natural forms of organization in condensed matter is inherently limited by the availability of suitable colloidal building blocks. To enable new forms of crystalline and…
Cholesteric Liquid Crystals (CLCs), subject to externally applied magnetic fields and confined between two parallel planar surfaces with strong homeotropic anchoring conditions, are found to undergo transitions to different types of…
The physical mechanism of elasticity of liquid surfaces coated with colloidal particles is proposed. It is suggested that particles are separated by water clearings and the capillary interaction between them is negligible. The case is…
Understanding the out-of equilibrium behaviour of point defects in crystals, yields insights into the nature and fragility of the ordered state, as well as being of great practical importance. In some rare cases defects are spontaneously…
The general description of formation the cellular structure in the system of interacting particles is proposed. Interactions between particles are presumably well-understood and the phase transition in which can be studied in the scale of…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…