Related papers: Chiral liquid crystal colloids
We studied a collection of chiral active particles (CAP) on a two dimensional substrate using extensive numerical study. Particles interact through soft repulsive interaction. The activity and chirality of particles is tuned by varying…
Dihedral ('$k$-atic') liquid crystals (DLCs) are assemblies of microscopic constituent particles that exhibit $k$-fold discrete rotational and reflection symmetries. Generalizing the half-integer defects in nematic liquid crystals,…
We predict theoretically the existence of a class of colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal (NLC) cells, which are induced by surface patterns on the plates of the cell (like cells with UV-irradiated polyimide surfaces using micron…
We theoretically investigate the pitch of lyotropic cholesteric phases composed of slender rods with steric chirality transmitted via a weak helical deformation of the backbone. In this limit, the model is amenable to analytical treatment…
Understanding the relaxation dynamics of colloidal suspensions is crucial to identify the elements that influence the mobility of their constituents, assess their macroscopic response across the relevant time and length scales, and thus…
Chiral crystals, like chiral molecules, cannot be superimposed onto their mirror images -- a fundamental property that has been linked to interesting physical behavior and exploited in functional devices. Among the simplest inorganic…
Polar nematic liquid crystals are new classes of condensed-matter states where the inversion symmetry common to the traditional apolar nematics is broken. Establishing theoretical descriptions for the novel phase states is an urgent task.…
Chirality in inorganic nanoparticles and nanostructures has gained increasing scientific interest, because of the possibility to tune their ability to interact differently with left- and right-handed circularly polarized light. In some…
Motivated by experiments on colloidal membranes composed of chiral rod-like viruses, we use Monte Carlo methods to determine the phase diagram for the liquid crystalline order of the rods and the membrane shape. We generalize the…
Monodisperse suspensions of Brownian colloidal spheres crystallize at high densities, and ordering under shear has been observed at densities below the crystallization threshold. We perform large-scale simulations of a model suspension…
We derive a multiphysics model that accounts for network elasticity with spontaneous strains, swelling and nematic interactions in liquid crystal gels (LCGs). We discuss the coupling among the various physical mechanisms, with particular…
During the early developmental process of organisms, the formation of the left-right laterality requires a subtle mechanism, as it is associated with other principal body axes. Any inherent chiral feature in an egg cell can in principal…
Bottom-up assembly of nanocrystals (NCs) into ordered arrays, or superlattices (SLs), is a promising route to design materials with new functionalities, but the degree of control over assembly into functional structures remains challenging.…
We investigate the emergence of chiral meso-structures in one-dimensional fluids consisting of stacked discotic particles and demonstrate that helical undulations are generated spontaneously from internal elastic stresses. The stability of…
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…
So-called polar liquid crystals possess spontaneous long-range mutual orientation of their electric dipole moments, conferring bulk polarity to fluid phases of matter. The combination of polarity and fluidity leads to complex phase…
In many active matter systems, particle trajectories have a well-defined handedness or chirality. Whether such chiral activity can introduce stereoselective interactions between particles is not known. Here we developed a strategy to tune…
We investigate condensation of a long confined chiral nematic polymer inside a spherical enclosure, mimicking condensation of DNA inside a viral capsid. The Landau-de Gennes nematic free energy {\sl Ansatz} appropriate for nematic polymers…
Recent experiments on aligned DNA show hexatic order with no sign of macroscopic chirality. I make the analogy between smectic liquid crystals and chiral hexatics and show how the absence of chirality cannot occur in a thermodynamic phase…
Ground states of materials with orientational order ranging from solid ferromagnets and ferroelectrics to liquid crystals often contain spatially varying vector-like order parameter caused by inner factors such as the shape of building…