Related papers: Chiral liquid crystal colloids
Contacts between particles in dense, sheared suspensions are believed to underpin much of their rheology. Roughness and adhesion are known to constrain the relative motion of particles, and thus globally affect the shear response, but an…
Molecular chirality frustrates the two-dimensional assembly of filamentous molecules, a fact that reflects the generic impossibility of imposing a global twisting of layered materials. We explore the consequences of this frustration for…
This study investigates the influence of chirality, viscous effects, and confinement geometry on the flow dynamics and defect structures of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) using numerical simulations. As chiral strength increases,…
Recent numerical simulations of hard helical particle systems unveiled the existence of a novel chiral nematic phase, termed screw-like, characterised by the helical organization of the particle C$_2$ symmetry axes round the nematic…
Colloidal gels are out of equilibrium soft solids composed of attractive Brownian particles that form a space-spanning network at low volume fractions. The elastic properties of these systems result from the network microstructure, which is…
This mini-review discusses the recent contribution of theoretical and computational physics as well as experimental efforts to the understanding of the behavior of colloidal particles in confined geometries and at liquid crystalline…
Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…
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…
The migration of helical particles in viscous shear flows plays a crucial role in chiral particle sorting. Attaching a non-chiral head to a helical particle leads to a rheotactic torque inducing particle reorientation. This phenomenon is…
We study the effects of colloidal nanoparticles (NPs) in liquid crystal samples in the dilute limit, in a Landau--de Gennes theoretical framework. The effects of the suspended NPs are captured by a homogenized energy, as outlined…
Inspired by recent developments in self-assembled chiral nanostructures, we have explored the possibility of using spherical particles packed in cylinders as building blocks for chiral photonic crystals. In particular, we focused on an…
The assembly of filamentous bundles with controlled diameters is common in biological systems and desirable for the development of nanomaterials. We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral…
The propagation of chirality across scales is a common but poorly understood phenomenon in soft matter. In this work, we use computer simulations to study chiral monolayer assemblies formed by hard rod-like colloidal particles in the…
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…
We show that development of polar order may spontaneously destroy the lamellar structure of a liquid crystal. This results in an unusual sequence of phases with the ferroelectric nematic phase appearing below a non-polar smectic phase. The…
The confinement of liquid crystals inside curved geometries leads to exotic structures, with applications ranging from bio-sensors to optical switches and privacy windows. Here we study how curvature affects the alignment of a cholesteric…
Understanding how nanostructure and nanomechanics influence physical material properties on the micro- and macroscale is an essential goal in soft condensed matter research. Mechanisms governing fragmentation and chirality inversion of…
The new free energy functional that describes general elastic interaction between colloidal particles and nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. It generalizes results of the paper \cite{lupe} on the case of arbitrary orientation of…
Understanding interactions between chiral active particles -- self-propelling and self-rotating entities -- is crucial for uncovering how chiral active matter self-organizes into dynamic structures. Although fluctuation-induced forces in…
Colloidal membranes are monolayer assemblies of rodlike particles that capture the long-wavelength properties of lipid bilayer membranes on the colloidal scale. Recent experiments on colloidal membranes formed by chiral rodlike viruses…