Related papers: Structure of the cholesteric-isotropic interface
The interplay between geometry, topology and order can lead to geometric frustration that profoundly affects the shape and structure of a curved surface. In this commentary we show how frustration in this context can result in the faceting…
In equilibrium liquid crystals, chirality leads to a variety of spectacular three-dimensional structures, but chiral and achiral phases with the same broken continuous symmetries have identical long-time, large-scale dynamics. In this…
We demonstrate the realization of (laterally) optically bounded colloidal structures on a liquid-liquid interface of an emulsion droplet. We use DNA tethers to graft the particles to the droplet surface, effectively confining them to a…
This study investigates the influence of chirality, viscous effects, and confinement geometry on the flow dynamics and defect structures of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) using numerical simulations. As chiral strength increases,…
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…
The crystal-melt interfaces of a binary hard-sphere fluid mixture in coexistence with a single-component hard-sphere crystal is investigated using molecular-dynamics simulation. In the system under study, the fluid phase consists of a…
Topological properties of crystalline ice structures are studied by considering ring statistics, coordination sequences, and topological density of different ice phases. The coordination sequences (number of sites at topological distance k…
We study the lubrication of fluid-immersed soft interfaces and show that elastic deformation couples tangential and normal forces and thus generates lift. We consider materials that deform easily, due to either geometry (e.g. a shell) or…
Many solid materials and liquid crystals exhibit geometric frustration, meaning that they have an ideal local structure that cannot fill up space. For that reason, the global phase must be a compromise between the ideal local structure and…
Previous experiments have shown that spherical colloidal particles relax to equilibrium slowly after they adsorb to a liquid-liquid interface, despite the large interfacial energy gradient driving the adsorption. The slow relaxation has…
We provide a detailed description of our previously proposed scheme for topological interface engineering with constructed defects and textures perforating across coherent interfaces between different broken symmetries [M. O. Borgh and J.…
Water/solid interfaces are relevant to a broad range of physicochemical phenomena and technological processes such as corrosion, lubrication, heterogeneous catalysis and electrochemistry. Although many fields have contributed to rapid…
We study the self-assembly of colloidal microgel particles at a quasi-two-dimensional air-water interface of a drying droplet. Using bright-field microscopy, we demonstrate that increasing particle elasticity drives interfacial organization…
The topological properties of the bulk band structure of a three-dimensional topological insulator (TI) manifest themselves in the form of metallic surface states. In this paper, we propose a probe which directly couples to an exotic…
Identifying and removing microplastics (MPs) from the environment is a global challenge. This study explores how the colloidal fraction of common MPs behave at aqueous interfaces of liquid crystal (LC) films. We observed polyethylene (PE)…
Assembly of colloidal particles on fluid interfaces is a promising technique for synthesizing two-dimensional micro-crystalline materials useful in fields as diverse as biomedicine1, materials science2, mineral flotation3 and food…
Complex morphologies and microstructures that emerge during materials growth and solidification are often determined by both equilibrium and kinetic properties of the interface and their crystalline anisotropies. However limited knowledge…
Layered materials span a very broad range of solids ranging from van der Waals materials to highly complex crystal structures such as clays. They are commonly believed to have highly anisotropic properties, which is essentially attributed…
The effects of contact-line pinning are well-known in macroscopic systems, but are only just beginning to be explored at the microscale in colloidal suspensions. We use digital holography to capture the fast three-dimensional dynamics of…
We describe and illustrate a simple procedure for identifying a liquid interface from atomic coordinates. In particular, a coarse grained density field is constructed, and the interface is defined as a constant density surface for this…