Related papers: Nematic droplets at fibres
Motivated by recent experiments, the isotropic-nematic phase transition in chromonic liquid crystals is studied. As temperature decreases, nematic nuclei nucleate, grow, and coalesce, giving rise to tactoid microstructures in an isotropic…
We study the structure and morphological changes of fluids that are in contact with solid composites formed by alternating and microscopically wide stripes of two different materials. One type of the stripes interacts with the fluid via…
We present a theoretical study related to a recent experiment on the coalescence of sessile drops. The study deals with the kinetics of relaxation towards equilibrium, under the action of surface tension, of a spheroidal drop on a flat…
The surface tension of partially wetting droplets deforms soft substrates. These deformations are usually localized to a narrow region near the contact line, forming a so-called `elastocapillary ridge.' When a droplet slides along a…
Liquid crystal elastomers present a rich combination of effects associated with orientational symmetry breaking and the underlying rubber elasticity. In this work we focus on the effect of the network on the nematic--smectic-{\sl A}…
Free interfaces of liquid crystals tend to minimise both capillarity and anchoring forces. Here we study nematic films in planar and radial geometries with antagonistic anchoring boundary conditions and one deformable interface. Assuming a…
There is now growing evidence of the emergence and biological functionality of liquid crystal features, including nematic order and topological defects, in cellular tissues. However, how such features that intrinsically rely on particle…
A theoretical study is presented of surface waves at a monomolecular surfactant film between an isotropic liquid and a nematic liquid crystal for the case when the surfactant film is in the isotropic two-dimensional fluid phase and induces…
The translation and shape deformations of a passive viscous Newtonian droplet immersed in an active nematic liquid crystal under circular confinement are analyzed using a linear stability analysis. We focus on the case of a sharply aligned…
When a liquid droplet impacts a vibrated micro-structured surface with asymmetric topology, the liquids perform a horizontal motion during its bouncing. The moving effect is observed when the liquid is in contact with a low surface energy…
Active fluids display spontaneous turbulent-like flows known as active turbulence. Recent work revealed that these flows have universal features, independent of the material properties and of the presence of topological defects. However,…
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…
The equilibrium texture of nematic shells is studied as a function of their thickness. For ultrathin shells the ground state has four short 1/2 disclination lines but, as the thickness of the film increases, a three dimensional escaped…
We investigate the dynamics of active nematic liquid crystals on deformable membranes, focusing on the interplay between active stress and anisotropic curvature coupling. Using a minimal model, we simulate the coupled evolution of the…
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,…
Block copolymers often create droplets when placed on a substrate. Such nanostructured droplets can be arranged into regular microstructured arrays, thereby forming hierarchically organized materials that can be used in microelectronics,…
Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials.…
Designing smart devices with tunable shapes has important applications in industrial manufacture. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear deformation and the morphological transitions between buckling, necking, and snap-through…
The effect of superimposed ac and dc electric fields on the formation of electroconvection and flexoelectric patterns in nematic liquid crystals was studied. For selected ac frequencies an extended standard model of the electro-hydrodynamic…
We propose an efficient numerical scheme, based on the method of lines, for solving the Landau-de Gennes equations describing the relaxational dynamics of nematic liquid crystals. Our method is computationally easy to implement, balancing…