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Nematic elastomers are a particular class of liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) that exhibit both liquid-crystalline order and rubber (entropic) elasticity. This combination makes them stimuli-responsive soft materials with a number of…
We present a pedagogical review of the swelling thermodynamics and phase transitions of polymer gels. In particular, we discuss how features of the volume phase transition of the gel's osmotic equilibrium is analogous to other transitions…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
Colloidal particles dispersed in a partially ordered medium, such as a liquid crystal (LC) phase, disturb its alignment and are subject to elastic forces. These forces are long-ranged, anisotropic and tunable through temperature or external…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked elastomer networks with liquid crystal mesogens incorporated into the main or side chain. Polydomain liquid crystalline (nematic) elastomers exhibit unusual mechanical properties like soft…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
In this article we consider systems of parallel hard {\it superellipsoids}, which can be viewed as a possible interpolation between ellipsoids of revolution and cylinders. Superellipsoids are characterized by an aspect ratio and an exponent…
Swimming in low-Reynolds-number fluids requires the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and centrosymmetry. Microswimmers, often with asymmetric shapes, exhibit nonreciprocal motions or exploit nonequilibrium processes to propel. The role of…
We study a two-dimensional fluid of particles interacting through a spherically-symmetric and marginally soft two-body repulsion. This model can exist in three different crystal phases, one of them with square symmetry and the other two…
Vesicular capsules are used to carry biochemicals in biology and liposome technology. Being water-permeable with differing interior and exterior compositions, they are necessarily under osmotic stress. Recent studies have underlined the…
Orientational and positional ordering properties of liquid crystal monolayers are examined by means of Fundamental-Measure Density Functional Theory. Particles forming the monolayer are modeled as hard parallelepipeds of square section of…
Polymeric particles are strong candidates for designing artificial materials capable of emulating the complex twisting-based functionality observed in biological systems. In this letter, we provide the first detailed investigation of the…
Two-dimensional polar liquid crystals have been discovered recently in monolayers of anisotropic molecules. Here, we provide a systematic theoretical description of liquid-crystalline phases for polar particles in two spatial dimensions.…
Bulk properties of ionic liquid crystals are investigated using density functional theory. The liquid crystal molecules are represented by ellipsoidal particles with charges located in their center or at their tails. Attractive interactions…
Cells offer numerous inspiring examples where proteins and membranes combine to form complex structures that are key to intracellular compartmentalization, cargo transport, and specialization of cell morphology. Despite this wealth of…
The blue phases are observed in highly chiral liquid crystalline compositions that nascently organize into a three-dimensional, crystalline nanostructure. The periodicity of the unit cell lattice parameters is on the order of the wavelength…
Polyhedral vesicles with a large bending modulus of the membrane such as the gel phase lipid membrane were studied using a Brownian dynamics simulation. The vesicles exhibit various polyhedral morphologies such as tetrahedron and cube…
The surface alignment of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) can be not only planar (tangential) but also homeotropic, with self-assembled aggregates perpendicular to the substrate, as demonstrated by mapping optical retardation and…
Despite their considerable practical and biological applications, the link between molecular properties, assembly conditions and self-organized structure in confined polymer solutions remains elusive. Here, we explore the lyotropic nematic…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…