Related papers: Shapes and singularities in triatic liquid crystal…
We systematize and extend the description of vesicle growth and shape change using linear nonequilibrium thermodynamics. By restricting the study to shape changes from spheres to axisymmetric ellipsoids, we are able to give a consistent…
The parametric equations of the plane curves determining the equilibrium shapes that a uniform inextensible elastic ring or tube could take subject to a uniform hydrostatic pressure are presented in an explicit analytic form. The…
The stability of shapes formed by three viscoelastic droplets during their arrested coalescence has been investigated using micromanipulation experiments. Addition of a third droplet to arrested droplet doublets is shown to be controlled by…
Widely known for their uses in displays and electro-optics, liquid crystals are more than just technological marvels. They vividly reveal the topology and structure of various solitonic and singular field configurations, often markedly…
Hard spherocylinders (cylinders of length $L$ and diameter $D$ capped at both ends with two hemispheres) provide a suitable model for investigating entropy-driven, mesophase formations in real colloidal fluids that are composed of rigid…
We establish the most general form of the discrete elasticity of a 2D triangular lattice embedded in three dimensions, taking into account up to next-nearest neighbour interactions. Besides crystalline system, this is relevant to biological…
The phase-ordering kinetics of a bulk uniaxial nematic liquid crystal is addressed using techniques that have been successfully applied to describe ordering in the O(n) model. The method involves constructing an appropriate mapping between…
This paper investigates nematic liquid crystals in three-dimensional curved space, and determines which director deformation modes are compatible with each possible type of non-Euclidean geometry. Previous work by Sethna et al. showed that…
Topology and geometry of a sphere create constraints for particles that lie on its surface which they otherwise do not experience in Euclidean space. Notably, the number of particles and the size of the system can be varied separately,…
We examine nanoparticles (NPs) forming polyhedral sections of the ideal cubic lattice, simple (sc), body centered (bcc), and face centered (fcc) cubic, which are confined by facets characterized by densest and second densest {h k l}…
We study a discrete version of a biaxial nematic liquid crystal model with external fields via an approach based on the solution of differential identities for the partition function. In the thermodynamic limit, we derive the free energy of…
Liquid crystal elastomers represent a novel class of programmable shape-transforming materials whose shape change trajectory is encoded in the material's nematic director field. Using three-dimensional nonlinear finite element…
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…
General topological principles how to transfer the planar orders onto a sphere are considered. Formation of extended topological defects (ETDs), which have a reconstructed inner structure surrounded by perfect initial order, is discussed.…
Hard sphere systems are often used to model simple fluids. The configuration spaces of hard spheres in a three-dimensional torus modulo various symmetry groups are comparatively simple, and could provide valuable information about the…
We report numerical investigations of a three-dimensional model of diffusive growth of fine particles, the internal structure of which corresponds to different crystal lattices. A growing cluster (particle) is immersed in, and exchanges…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
We use an elastic model to explore faceting of solid-wall vesicles with elastic heterogeneities. We show that faceting occurs in regions where the vesicle wall is softer, such as areas of reduced wall thicknesses or concentrated in…
There is considerable interest in understanding and controlling topological defects in nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Confinement, in the form of droplets, has been particularly effective in that regard. Here, we employ the Landau-de Gennes…
We present a combined theoretical and experimental study of the buckling of a thin film wrapped around a sphere under the action of capillary forces. A rigid sphere is coated with a wetting liquid, and then wrapped by a thin film into an…