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We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…
We stabilize nematic droplets with handles against surface-tension-driven instabilities using a yield-stress material as outer fluid and study the complex nematic textures and defect structures that result from the competition between…
New applications of liquid crystalline materials have increased the need for precise engineering of elastic properties. Recently, Sidky et al. presented methods by which the elastic coefficients of molecular models with atomistic detail can…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Topological defects are a ubiquitous phenomenon in diverse physical systems. In nematic liquid crystals (LCs), they are dynamic, physicochemically distinct, sensitive to stimuli, and are thereby promising for a range of applications.…
Microbullet particles, cylinders with one blunt and one spherical end, offer a novel platform to study the effects of anisotropy and curvature on colloidal assembly in complex fluids. Here, we disperse microbullets in…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
Achieving control and tunability of lyotropic materials has been a long-standing goal of liquid crystal research. Here we show that the elasticity of a liquid crystal system consisting of a dense suspension of semiflexible biopolymers can…
Dynamic simulations of the isotropic-nematic phase transformation of liquid crystal droplets under homeotropic anchoring are found to predict chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics. These observations occur when using material parameters for…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
This study explores the mechanisms behind the helical structures in cholesteric liquid crystalline (CLC) phases using molecular dynamics simulations. By adding chiral agents to the nematic liquid crystalline (NLC) compound, 5CB, the…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
Perovskite based nanocomposites provide a versatile platform for tailoring light matter coupling and carrier injection in low dimensional optoelectronics. In particular hybrid structures incorporating transition metal dichalcogenides…
Liquid crystalline networks (LCNs) are stimuli-responsive materials formed from polymeric chains cross-linked with rod-like mesogenic segments, which, in the nematic phase, align along a non-polar director. A key characteristic of these…
Capillary microflows of liquid crystal phases are central to material, biological and bio-inspired systems. Despite their fundamental and applied significance, a detailed understanding of the stationary behaviour of nematic liquid crystals…
Chiral additives in the nematic liquid crystal can alter the dynamics of point defects moving on a disclination line. They exert a constant force on defects, leading to the bimodal distribution of distances between them at long times. The…
Biological cells in living tissues form dynamic patterns with local orientational order and topological defects. Here we demonstrate an approach to produce cell monolayer with the predesigned orientational patterns using human dermal…
Topology can manifest itself in colloids when quantified by invariants like Euler characteristics of nonzero-genus colloidal surfaces, albeit spherical colloidal particles are most often studied, and colloidal particles with complex…
In this paper, the two-dimensional pure bending of a hyperelastic substrate coated by a nematic liquid crystal elastomer (abbreviated as NLCE) is studied within the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The governing system, arising from the…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…