Related papers: Elastic interactions between topological defects i…
Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…
We study by simulation the physics of two colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal with tangential order parameter alignment at the particle surface. The effective force between the pair is attractive at short range and favors…
We analyse here the problem of large deformation of dielectric elastomeric membranes under coupled electromechanical loading. Extremely large deformations (enclosed volume changes of 100 times and greater) of a toroidal membrane are studied…
The structure, thermodynamics and slow activated dynamics of the equilibrated metastable regime of glass-forming fluids remains a poorly understood problem of high theoretical and experimental interest. We apply a highly accurate…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…
Building a general theoretical framework to describe the microscopic origin of macroscopic chirality in (colloidal) liquid crystals is a long-standing challenge. Here, we combine classical density functional theory with Monte Carlo…
The elastic and capillary interactions between a pair of colloidal particles trapped on top of a nematic film are studied theoretically for large separations $d$. The elastic interaction is repulsive and of quadrupolar type, varying as…
We report a comprehensive analysis of the ground state properties of axisymmetric toroidal crystals based on the elastic theory of defects on curved substrates. The ground state is analyzed as a function of the aspect ratio of the torus,…
Toroidal nematics are droplets of nematic liquid crystals in the form of a circular torus. When the nematic director is subject to planar degenerate boundary conditions, the bend-only director field with vector lines along the parallels of…
In this paper, we introduce a methodology applicable to a wide range of localized two-dimensional sources of stress. This methodology is based on a geometric formulation of elasticity. Localized sources of stress are viewed as singular…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
A rigid cylinder placed on a soft gel deforms its surface. When multiple cylinders are placed on the surface, they interact with each other via the topography of the deformed gel which serves as an energy landscape; as they move, the…
Colloidal gels consist of percolating networks of interconnected arms. Their mechanical properties depend on the individual arms, and on their collective behaviour. We use numerical simulations to pull on a single arm, built from a model…
Active cholesterics are chiral in both their structure, which has continuous screw symmetry, and their active stresses, which include contributions from torque dipoles. Both expressions of chirality give rise to curl forces in the…
Malleability of metals is an example of how dynamics of defects like dislocations induced by external stresses alters material properties and enables technological applications. However, these defects move merely to comply with the…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
Colloidal gels are out-of-equilibrium structures, made up of a rarefied network of colloidal particles. Comparing experiments to numerical simulations, with hydrodynamic interactions switched off, we demonstrate the crucial role of the…
Abundant in nature, colloids also find increasingly important applications in science and technology, ranging from direct probing of kinetics in crystals and glasses to fabrication of third-generation quantum-dot solar cells. Because…
We study avenues to shape multistability and shape-morphing in flexible crystalline membranes of cylindrical topology, enabled by glide mobility of dislocations. Using computational modeling, we obtain states of mechanical equilibrium…
We consider helical configurations of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) sandwiched between two substrates with homogeneous director orientation favored at both confining plates. We study the CLC twist wavenumber $q$ characterizing the…