Related papers: Field-controlled columnar and planar patterning of…
Topological protection ensures stability of information and particle transport against perturbations. We explore experimentally and computationally the topologically protected transport of magnetic colloids above spatially inhomogeneous…
Swimmers and self-propelled particles are physical models for the collective behaviour and motility of a wide variety of living systems, such as bacteria colonies, bird flocks and fish schools. Such artificial active materials are amenable…
When nematic liquid crystals are embedded in random polymer networks, the disordered environment disrupts the long-range order, producing a glassy state. If an electric field is applied, it induces large and fairly temperature-independent…
A recently introduced active phase field crystal model describes the formation of ordered resting and traveling crystals in systems of self-propelled particles. Increasing the active drive, a resting crystal can be forced to perform…
We demonstrate several examples of driving and steering of colloids when dispersed in nematic liquid crystals. The driving mechanism is based on the principle of nonlinear electrophoresis which is mediated by the asymmetry in the structure…
The influence of an external field acting differently on the two constituents of a binary colloidal mixture performing Brownian dynamics is investigated by computer simulations and a simple theory. In our model, one half of the particles…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles due to elastic interactions in nematic liquid crystals promises tunable composite materials and can be guided by exploiting surface functionalization, geometric shape and topology, though these means of…
In this Letter we report observations of optically induced self-organization of colloidal arrays in the presence of un-patterned counter-propagating evanescent waves. The colloidal arrays formed along the laser propagation-axis are shown to…
We investigate how ferrofluid droplets suspended in a wall-bounded shear flow can organise when subjected to an external magnetic field. By tuning the magnitude of the external magnetic field, we find that the ferrofluid droplets form…
Spin coating is an out-of-equilibrium technique for producing polymer films and colloidal crystals quickly and reproducibly. In this review, we present an overview of theoretical and experimental studies of the spin coating of colloidal…
This Article presents a nonequilibrium thermodynamic theory for the mean-field precipitation, aggregation and pattern formation of colloidal clusters. A variable gradient energy coefficient and the arrest of particle diffusion upon…
Charged colloidal crystals exhibit a subtle interplay between electrostatic screening and elastic deformation. In an anisotropic elastic medium the coupling between dilation and the local ionic environment becomes direction dependent,…
We demonstrate a novel route of spatially organizing the colloid arrangements on the polymer-grafted substrate by use of self-consistent field and density functional theories. We find that grafting of polymers onto a substrate can…
Phase transformations can be difficult to characterize at the microscopic level due to the inability to directly observe individual atomic motions. Model colloidal systems, by contrast, permit the direct observation of individual particle…
We investigate the possibility to control the symmetry of ordered states in phase-field crystal models by tuning nonlinear resonances. In two dimensions, we find that a state of square symmetry as well as coexistence between squares and…
We study the phase behaviour of a two-dimensionally confined hard sphere colloidal system in the presence of a periodic light field of two interfering laser beams using Monte Carlo simulations. For a given packing fraction of the particles,…
The kinetics of phase transition processes often governs the resulting material microstruc-ture. Using optical microscopy, we here investigate the formation and stabilization of a po-rous crystalline microstructure forming in low-salt…
The oblique helicoidal structure is formed in right-angle cholesterics under the applied electric field. The electric field changes the pitch and cone angle but preserves the single-harmonic modulation of the refractive index. As a result,…
A continuum density-field formulation with particle-scale resolution is constructed to simultaneously incorporate the orientation dependence of interparticle interactions and the rotational invariance of the system, a fundamental but…
We study a dynamical model of a rod-like particle surrounded by a cloud of smaller particles of the same charge and we show that, in the presence of a low-frequency alternating electric field, the rod displays the same type of anomalous…