Related papers: Waltzing route towards double-helix formation in c…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
Cholesteric liquid crystals experience geometric frustration when they are confined between surfaces with anchoring conditions that are incompatible with the cholesteric twist. Because of this frustration, they develop complex topological…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of chirality and biaxiality in liquid crystals through a variety of theoretical approaches, including Monte Carlo simulations, lattice mean-field theory, and Landau theory. All of these calculations…
When a chiral isotropic elastomer is brought to low temperature cholesteric phase, the nematic degree of freedom tends to order and form a helix. Due to the nemato-elastic coupling, this also leads to elastic deformation of the polymer…
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…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
Using density-functional theory in the restricted-orientation approximation, we analyse the liquid-crystal patterns and phase behaviour of a fluid of hard rectangular particles confined in a two-dimensional square nanocavity of side length…
Recent numerical simulations of hard helical particle systems unveiled the existence of a novel chiral nematic phase, termed screw-like, characterised by the helical organization of the particle C$_2$ symmetry axes round the nematic…
We simulate a colloidal particle (radius R) in a cholesteric liquid crystal (pitch p) with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The local defect structure evolves from a dipolar pair of surface defects (boojums) at…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
The shape of the building blocks plays a crucial role in directing self-assembly towards desired architectures. Out of the many different shapes, helix has a unique position. Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and a helical shape…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
By means of extensive replica-exchange simulations of generic coarse-grained models for helical polymers, we systematically investigate the structural transitions into all possible helical phases for flexible and semiflexible elastic…
We numerically investigate the collision dynamics and deformation behaviors of double-core compound droplet pairs within confined shear flows using free-energy-based lattice Boltzmann method. While significant research has advanced our…
The ordering of particles in the drying process of a colloidal suspension is crucial in determining the properties of the resulting film. For example, microscopic inhomogeneities can lead to the formation of cracks and defects that can…
Integer winding disclinations are unstable in a nematic and are removed by an `escape into the third dimension', resulting in a non-singular texture. This process is frustrated in a cholesteric material due to the requirement of maintaining…
On microscopic scales, the crystallinity of flexible tethered or cross linked membranes determines their mechanical response. We show that by controlling the type, number and distribution of defects on a spherical elastic shell, it is…
We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…
We consider the interaction potential between two chiral rod-like colloids which consist of a thin cylindrical backbone decorated with a helical charge distribution on the cylinder surface. For sufficiently slender coiled rods a simple…