Related papers: Nematic Films at Chemically Structured Surfaces
Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…
A micrometer-scale elastic shell immersed in a nematic liquid crystal may be deformed by the host if the cost of deformation is comparable to the cost of elastic deformation of the nematic. Moreover, such inclusions interact and form chains…
Recent experiments and simulations have demonstrated that particle-covered interfaces can exist in stable non-spherical shapes as a result of the steric jamming of the interfacially trapped particles, which confers the interface with…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
Many objects in nature and industry are wrapped in a thin sheet to enhance their chemical, mechanical, or optical properties. There are similarly a variety of methods for wrapping, from pressing a film onto a hard substrate, to using…
We consider free surface instabilities of films flowing on inverted substrates within the framework of lubrication approximation. We allow for the presence of fronts and related contact lines, and explore the role which they play in…
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…
Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…
We derive a F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n-type constitutive model for solid liquid crystalline plates where the nematic director may or may not rotate freely relative to the elastic network. To obtain the reduced two-dimensional model, we…
We use the method of $\Gamma$-convergence to study the behavior of the Landau-de Gennes model for a nematic liquid crystalline film in the limit of vanishing thickness. In this asymptotic regime, surface energy plays a greater role and we…
We study the adsorption of a fluid in the grand canonical ensemble occurring at a planar heterogeneous wall which is decorated with a chemical stripe of width $L$. We suppose that the material of the stripe strongly preferentially adsorbs…
We use the method of $\Gamma$-convergence to study the behavior of the Landau-de Gennes model for a nematic liquid crystalline film attached to a general fixed surface in the limit of vanishing thickness. This paper generalizes the approach…
Chemical heterogeneity of solid surfaces disrupts the adsorption of surfactants from the bulk liquid. While its presence can hinder the performance of some formulations, bespoke chemical patterning could potentially facilitate controlled…
We consider a mathematical model that describes the flow of a Nematic Liquid Crystal (NLC) film placed on a flat substrate, across which a spatially-varying electric potential is applied. Due to their polar nature, NLC molecules interact…
Motivated by recent experimental observations [U. Delabre et al, Langmuir 24, 3998, 2008] we reconsider an instability of ultrathin nematic films, spread on liquid substrates. Within a continuum elastic theory of liquid crystals, in the…
In the context of finite elasticity, we propose plate models describing the spontaneous bending of nematic elastomer thin films due to variations along the thickness of the nematic order parameters. Reduced energy functionals are deduced…
We propose a continuum model to describe the molecular alignment in thin nematic shells. By contrast with previous accounts, the two-dimensional free energy, aimed at describing the physics of thin films of nematics deposited on curved…
Dewetting of thin liquid films is monitored in situ by atomic force microscopy, results are compared with simulations. The experimental setting is mimicked as close as possible using the experimental parameters including the effective…
We develop a theory of axisymmetric surfaces minimizing a combination of surface tension and nematic elastic energies which may be suitable for describing simple film and bubble shapes. As a function of the elastic constant and the applied…
We study the behavior of very thin liquid films wetting homogeneous planar and spherical substrates. In order to describe a simple fluid at very small scales, we employ a classical density functional theory (DFT). Here, we model a fluid…