Related papers: Evolution of liquid crystal microstructure during …
We show that a simple two dimensional model of spin crossover materials gives rise to spin-state smectic phases where the pattern of high-spin (HS) and low-spin (LS) metal centers spontaneously breaks rotational symmetry and translational…
Deformations of amorphous polymer networks prepared with significant concentrations of liquid crystalline mesogens have been recently reported to undergo mechanotropic phase transitions. Here, we report that these mechanotropic phase…
Here, we report the rate-dependent energy absorption behavior of a liquid crystal elastomer (LCE)-based architected material consisting of repeating unit cells of bistable tilted LCE beams sandwiched between stiff supports. Viscoelastic…
Molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate heterogeneous dynamics in amorphous glassy materials under oscillatory shear strain. We consider three-dimensional binary Lennard-Jones mixture well below the glass transition…
In twist-bend nematic (N\textsubscript{TB}) liquid crystals (LCs), the mean molecular orientation exhibits heliconical structure with nanoscale periodicity. On the mesoscopic scale, N\textsubscript{TB} resembles layered systems (like…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
We subject a monodomain cholesteric liquid crystal elastomer to uniaxial strain perpendicular to its helical axis and study the response of its texture to deformation. A combination of mechanical, optical and X-ray scattering measurements…
Using simulations of hard rods in smectic-A states, we find non-gaussian diffusion and heterogeneous dynamics due to the equilibrium periodic smectic density profiles, which give rise to permanent barriers for layer-to-layer diffusion. This…
We investigate the phase behaviour of a two-dimensional colloidal model system of ultra-soft particles on a substrate which varies periodically along one spatial direction. Our calculations are based on mean-field density functional theory…
We investigate the connection between the transport properties and the thermodynamics of electronic systems with a tendency to form broken-symmetry mesophases evocative of the physics of liquid crystals. Through a hydrodynamic approach to…
Wrinkles commonly develop in a thin film deposited on a soft elastomer substrate when the film is subject to compression. Motivated by recent experiments [Agrawal et al., Soft Matter 8, 7138 (2012)] that show how wrinkle morphology can be…
Confining a colloidal crystal within a long narrow channel produced by two parallel walls can be used to impose a meso-scale superstructure of a predominantly mechanical elastic character [Chui et al., EPL 2008, 83, 58004]. When the crystal…
We show how microstructure can arise in first-order ferroelastic structural transitions, in two and three spatial dimensions, through a local meanfield approximation of their pseudospin hamiltonians, that include anisotropic elastic…
\textbf{Background} Hydrogels are crosslinked polymer networks that can absorb and retain a large fraction of liquid. Near a critical sliding velocity, hydrogels pressed against smooth surfaces exhibit time-dependent frictional behavior…
Lamellar or smectic phases often have an intricate intralamellar structure that remains scarcely understood from a microscopic viewpoint. In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of volume exclusion and…
We investigate experimentally the relationship between local structure and dynamical arrest in a quasi-2d colloidal model system which approximates hard discs. We introduce polydispersity to the system to suppress crystallisation. Upon…
At the A to C transition, smectic elastomers have recently been observed to undergo $\sim$35% spontaneous shear strains. We first explicitly describe how strains of up to twice this value could be mechanically or electrically induced in…
In many high temperature superconductors, small orthorhombic distortions of the lattice structure result in surprisingly large symmetry breaking of the electronic states and macroscopic properties, an effect often referred to as nematicity.…
Using the density functional formalism we derive expression for the distortion free energy for systems with continuous broken symmetry and use it to derive expression for the elastic constants of smectic phases in which director is tilted…
In this study, we use discrete dislocation dynamics (DDD) simulation to investigate the effect of heterogeneous dislocation density on the transition between quasi-elastic deformation and plastic flow in face-centered cubic single crystals.…