Related papers: Elastocapillary driven assembly of particles at fr…
We investigate theoretically the elliptical shapes of soft colloids in freely standing smectic C films, that have been reported recently. The colloids favour parallel alignment of the liquid crystal molecules at their surfaces and, for…
Capillary interactions can be used to direct assembly of particles adsorbed at fluid-fluid interfaces. Precisely controlling the magnitude and direction of capillary interactions to assemble particles into favoured structures for materials…
Colloidal particles trapped at an interface between two fluids can form a wide range of different structures. Replacing one of the fluid with a liquid crystal increases the complexity of interactions and results in a greater range of…
We study the effects of the optical binding force on wavelength sized colloidal particles free to move in a counter-propagating beam. This work is motivated by the concept of using optical binding to direct the assembly of large numbers of…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Colloids self-assemble into various organized superstructures determined by particle interactions. There is a tremendous progress in both the scientific understanding and applications of self-assemblies of single-type identical particles.…
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…
We consider the dynamic wetting and dewetting processes of films and droplets of complex liquids on planar surfaces, focusing on the case of colloidal suspensions, where the particle interactions can be sufficiently attractive to cause…
Charged colloidal particles trapped at an air--water interface are well known to form an ordered crystal, stabilized by a long ranged repulsion, the details of this repulsion remain something of a mystery, but all experiments performed to…
Capillary forces guide the motion of biomolecular condensates, water-borne insects, and breakfast cereal. These surface-mediated interactions can be harnessed to build units into materials with exotic properties deriving from mesoscale…
Using laser tweezers and fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with strong tangential surface anchoring. The…
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…
The ordering of nanoparticles into predetermined configurations is of importance to the design of advanced technologies. In this work, we moderate the surface anchoring against the bulk elasticity of liquid crystals to dynamically shape…
Ellipsoidal particles confined at liquid interfaces exhibit complex self-assembly behaviour due to quadrupolar capillary interactions induced by meniscus deformation. These interactions cause particles to attract each other in either…
Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…
Extreme deformation of soft matter is central to our understanding of the effects of shock, fracture, and phase change in a variety of systems. Yet, despite, the increasing interest in this area, far-from-equilibrium behaviours of soft…
Identifying and removing microplastics (MPs) from the environment is a global challenge. This study explores how the colloidal fraction of common MPs behave at aqueous interfaces of liquid crystal (LC) films. We observed polyethylene (PE)…
The physical mechanism of elasticity of liquid surfaces coated with colloidal particles is proposed. It is suggested that particles are separated by water clearings and the capillary interaction between them is negligible. The case is…
We demonstrate that the active thermocapillary stresses induced by multiple microbubbles offer simple routes to directed self-assembly and complex but controllable micromanipulation of mesoscopic colloidal particles embedded in a liquid.…
We study mutual alignment and interactions between colloidal particles of dissimilar shapes and dimensions when dispersed in a nematic host fluid. Convex pentagonal and concave starfruit-shaped nanoprisms and microspheres induce dipolar or…