Related papers: Surface induced structures in nematic liquid cryst…
Motile liquid crystal (LC) colloids show peculiar behavior due to the high sensitivity to external stimuli driven by the LC elastic and surface effects. However, few studies focus on harnessing the LC phase transitions to propel colloidal…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
The ability to manipulate polar entities with multiple external fields opens exciting possibilities for emerging functionalities and novel applications in spin systems, photonics, metamaterials, and soft matter. Liquid crystals (LCs),…
Topological defects that form on surfaces of ordered media, dubbed boojums, are ubiquitous in superfluids, liquid crystals (LCs), Langmuir monolayers, and Bose-Einstein condensates. They determine supercurrents in superfluids, impinge on…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
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…
We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is…
We propose a hybrid lattice Boltzmann algorithm to simulate the hydrodynamics of colloidal particles inside a liquid crystalline host. To validate our algorithm, we study the static and the microrheology of a colloid in a nematic, with…
A nematic liquid crystal (NLC) layer with the anisotropy axis modulated at a fixed rate q in the transverse direction is considered. If the layer locally constitutes a half-wave plate, then the thin-screen approximation predicts 100%…
We examine the behavior of spherical silica particles trapped at an air-nematic liquid crystal interface. When a strong normal anchoring is imposed, the beads spontaneously form various structures depending on their area density and the…
Drying of colloidal droplets on solid, rigid substrates is associated with a capillary pressure developing within the droplet. In due course of time, the capillary pressure builds up due to droplet evaporation resulting in the formation of…
Lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) represent aqueous dispersions of organic disk-like molecules that form cylindrical aggregates. Despite the growing interest in these materials, their flow behavior is poorly understood. Here, we…
A liquid crystal optical device made of an optically anisotropic heterostructure is considered. The device consists of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) layer sandwiched by two phase-shifting anisotropic layers of a nematic liquid crystal…
Liquid crystal layers sandwiched between a reference plate and a photosensitive substrate were investigated. We focused on the reverse geometry, where the cell was illuminated by a laser beam from the reference side. In planar cells…
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…
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 apply the method developed in Ref. [S.B.Chernyshuk and B.I.Lev, Phys.Rev.E, \textbf{81}, 041701 (2010)] for theoretical investigation of colloidal elastic interactions between axially symmetric particles in the confined nematic liquid…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…
Colloidal particles disturb the alignment of rod-like molecules of liquid crystals, giving rise to long-range interactions that minimize the free energy of distorted regions. Particle shape and topology are known to guide this self-assembly…