Related papers: Nematic liquid crystals on sinusoidal channels: th…
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…
A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
When captured by a flat nematic-isotropic interface, colloidal particles can be dragged by it. As a result spatially periodic structures may appear, with the period depending on a particle mass, size, and interface…
We investigate the effect of an anisotropic substrate on the turbulent dynamics of a simulated two dimensional active nematic. This is introduced as an anisotropic friction and an effective anisotropic viscosity, with the orientation of the…
Activity in nematics drives interfacial flows that lead to preferential alignment that is tangential or planar for extensile systems (pushers) and perpendicular or homeotropic for contractile ones (pullers). This alignment is known as…
We consider the orientational instabilities, both homogeneous and spatially periodic, developing in a nematic liquid crystal under rectilinear oscillatory Couette flow for director alignment perpendicular to the flow plane. Using numerical…
The director configuration of disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an external magnetic field is evaluated. Our method is a combination of a polynomial expansion for the director and of further analytical…
The anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on surfaces with grafted liquid crystalline chain molecules is studied by computer simulations and within a mean field approach. The computer simulations show that a swollen layer of collectively…
We discuss instabilities of fluid films of nanoscale thickness, with a particular focus on films where the destabilising mechanism allows for linear instability, metastability, and absolute stability. Our study is motivated by nematic…
Elastic constants of splay K_11, twist K_22, and bend K_33 of nematic liquid crystals are often assumed to be equal to each other in order to simplify the theoretical description of complex director fields. Here we present examples of how…
Liquids in systems with spherically symmetric interactions are not thermodynamically stable when the range of the attraction is reduced sufficiently. However, these metastable liquids have lifetimes long enough that they are readily…
The emergence of new techniques for the fabrication of nematic droplets with nontrivial topology provides new routes for the assembly of responsive devices. Here we perform a numerical study of spherical nematic droplets on fibres. We…
The study of spindle-like cells as nematic liquid crystals has led to remarkable insights in the understanding of tissue organization and morphogenesis. In the characterization of this anomalous liquid crystal material, we focus on the…
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…
A theoretical analysis of homeotropic alignment induced by nanoparticles (NPs) in a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) sample cell is presented. It is found that such alignment on the surface of a NP causes a change in the orientation of the…
Mono-layers of stearic and behenic acids and mixtures of them in different proportions, deposited with the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, were used to study the alignment and the alignment dynamics in nematic liquid crystal cells. A…
The understanding of self-organization in the twist-bend nematic $(N_\text{TB})$ phase, identified in 2011 in liquid crystal dimers, is at the forefront of soft matter research worldwide. This new nematic phase develops structural chirality…
In experiments which take a liquid crystal rapidly from the isotropic to the nematic phase, a dense tangle of defects is formed. In nematics, there are in principle both line and point defects (``hedgehogs''), but no point defects are…
The properties of liquid crystals can be modelled using an order parameter which describes the variability of the local orientation of rod-like molecules. Defects in the director field can arise due to external factors such as applied…