Related papers: Hexadecapolar colloids
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…
Biological cells in soft materials can be modeled as anisotropic force contraction dipoles. The corresponding elastic interaction potentials are long-ranged ($\sim 1/r^3$ with distance $r$) and depend sensitively on elastic constants,…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
A simple model of an active colloid consisting of dumbbell-shaped particles that cyclically change their length without propelling themselves is proposed and analyzed. At nanoscales, it represents an idealization for bacterial cytoplasm or…
Colloidal particles disturb the alignment of rod-like molecules of liquid crystals, giving rise to long-range interactions that minimize the free energy of distorted regions. Particle shape and topology are known to guide this self-assembly…
Field induced assembly of reconfigurable structures with complex hierarchical configurations has recently become an area of intense research with the promise for exciting applications in programmable self-assembly and nano/microstructure…
The hexadecapole deformation, as well as the quadrupole one, influences the low-lying states of finite nuclei. The hexadecapole correlations are often overshadowed by the large quadrupole effects, and hence have not been much investigated.…
Electrical charges are conserved. The same would be expected to hold for magnetic charges, yet magnetic monopoles have never been observed. It is therefore surprising that the laws of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, combined with Maxwell's…
The notion of strong electronic correlations arose in the context of $d$-metal oxides such as NiO but can be exemplified on systems as simple as the H$_2$ molecule. Here we shed light on correlation effects on B$_6^{2-}$ clusters as found…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
We study elastic interactions between colloidal particles and deformation landscapes of undulations in a cholesteric liquid crystal under an electric field applied normal to cholesteric layers. The onset of undulation instability is…
Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
The Hartree-Fock states of the many-electron atomic system can be unstable with respect to a static or dynamic shift of the electron shells. An appropriate non-rigid shell model for atomic clusters is developed. It permits to formulate a…
In the presence of a non-adsorbing polymer, monodisperse rod-like particles assemble into colloidal membranes, which are one rod-length thick liquid-like monolayers of aligned rods. Unlike 3D edgeless bilayer vesicles, colloidal monolayer…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Freezing of charged colloids on square or triangular two-dimensional periodic substrates has been recently shown to realize a rich variety of orientational orders. We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the corresponding structures.…
Amorphous solids appear to react elastically to small external strains, but in contrast to ideal elastic media, plastic responses abound immediately, at any value of the strain. Such plastic responses are quasi-localized in nature, with the…
Quasicrystals provide a fascinating class of materials with intriguing properties. Despite a strong potential for numerous technical applications, the conditions under which quasicrystals form are still poorly understood. Currently, it is…
We investigate the behavior of a mixture of asymmetric colloidal dumbbells and emulsion droplets by means of kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The evaporation of the droplets and the competition between droplet-colloid attraction and…
Interaction between dipolar forces, such as permanent magnets, generally leads to the formation of one-dimensional chains and rings. We investigated whether it was possible to let dipoles self-assemble into three-dimensional structures by…