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Strong effects of the Faraday instability on suspensions of rodlike colloidal particles are reported through measurements of the critical acceleration and of the surface wave amplitude. We show that the transition to parametrically excited…
Understanding the phase behavior of mixtures with many components is important in many contexts, including as a key step toward a physics-based description of intracellular compartmentalization. Here, we study the instabilities of a mixture…
A range of monodomain nematic liquid crystal elastomers containing differing proportions of photo-isomerisable mesogenic moieties, which turn from a rod-like to a kinked shape upon ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, was studied. Depending on the…
Using density-functional theory, we have analyzed the phase behavior of binary mixtures of hard rods of different lengths and diameters. Previous studies have shown a strong tendency of smectic phases of these mixtures to segregate and, in…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
Liquid crystal elastomers are cross-linked polymer networks covalently bonded with liquid crystal mesogens. In the nematic phase, due to strong coupling between mechanical strain and orientational order, these materials display…
The implications of soft `patchy' interactions on the orientational disorder-order transition of strongly elongated colloidal rods and flat disks is studied within a simple Onsager-van der Waals density functional theory. The theory…
The stability of liquid crystal phases in presence of small amount of non-mesogenic impurities is of general interest for a large spectrum of technological applications and in the theories of binary mixtures. Starting from the known phase…
Self consistent quantum approaches are used to study the instabilities of finite nuclear systems. The frequencies of multipole density fluctuations are determined as a function of dilution and temperature, for several isotopes. The spinodal…
We analyze the sedimentation behavior of a polydisperse two-dimensional liquid-crystal fluid using a local density functional theory based on scaled particle theory. Polydispersity is incorporated through variations in the roundness of hard…
By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as…
In equilibrium hard-rod fluids, and in effective hard-rod descriptions of anisotropic soft-particle systems, the transition from the isotropic (I) phase to the nematic phase (N) is observed above the rod aspect ratio L/D = 3.70 as predicted…
The phase diagram of nuclear matter is quite rich - it shows such phenomena as phase-transitions, formation of condensates, clustering, etc. From the analysis of the spinodal instability, one can learn about the region of liquid-gas…
The physics of nematic liquid crystals has been subject of intensive research since the late 19th century. However, because of the limitations of chemistry the focus has been centered around uni- and biaxial nematics associated with…
A Self Consistent Field Theory description of equilibrium, but non uniform, configurations adopted by semi flexible liquid crystal molecules is presented. Two cases are considered, isotropic-nematic phase boundaries, and topological defects…
Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
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…
Using grand canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations, we investigate the isotropic-nematic phase transition for hard rods of size Lx1x1 on a 3D cubic lattice. We observe such a transition for L >= 6. For L = 6, the nematic state has a…
Ferronematic phases, composed of liquid crystals doped with magnetic nanoparticles, exhibit unique magnetomechanical coupling effects that are of interest for responsive materials. In this study, we investigate the influence of…
A singular potential method in the Q tensor order parameter representation of a nematic liquid crystal is used to study the equilibrium configuration of a disclination dipole. Unlike the well studied isotropic limit (the so called one…