Related papers: Temperature-driven anchoring transitions at liquid…
We consider helical configurations of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) sandwiched between two substrates with homogeneous director orientation favored at both confining plates. We study the CLC twist wavenumber $q$ characterizing the…
Water drops used as reaction compartments are commonly immobilized on hydrophilic areas bordered by hydrophobic areas. For many applications, such as the trapping of non-adherent cells, it is desirable to exploit the inertness and the…
Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide), PNIPAM, is a widely studied polymer, which serves as a key constituent of nanostructured soft materials with responsive properties. Upon increasing temperature the PNIPAM polymer chain undergoes a reversible…
Nanoporous structures including single nanopores and nanoporous membranes have been utilized as a platform to study fundamental liquid-vapor phase change heat transfer (PCHT) processes as well as a promising candidate for high flux heat…
When a nematic liquid crystal (LC) is confined on a self-closing spherical shell, topological constraints arise with intriguing consequences that depend critically on how the LC is aligned in the shell. We demonstrate reversible dynamic…
Melting is typically viewed as a bulk first-order phase transition that proceeds once nucleation barriers are overcome. Here we demonstrate an interfacially arrested melting regime in molecularly thin crystalline films, where large liquid…
With gradual temperature increase in premelting regions of solid phase of methanol and high pressure phase of ethanol, and using novel procedure of separation of electrode polarization effects, we are able to register the contribution of…
An elastomer swelling actuator deforms by absorbing a fluid, thus generating mechanical movement. We show that depositing small droplets of low molecular weight liquid crystal on liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) films leads to shape changes…
The dynamics of a thin layer of liquid, between a flat solid substrate and an infinitely-thick layer of saturated vapor, is examined. The liquid and vapor are two phases of the same fluid, governed by the diffuse-interface model. The…
Controlling polymorphism in molecular crystals is crucial in the pharmaceutical, dye, and pesticide industries. However, its theoretical description is extremely challenging, due to the associated long timescales ($ > 1 \, \mu s$). We…
Dipolar susceptibility of interfacial water and the corresponding interface dielectric constant were calculated from numerical molecular dynamics simulations for neutral and charged states of buckminsterfullerene C$_{60}$. Dielectric…
Colloidal microgel particles such as poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) shrink reversibly in an aqueous medium due to the expulsion of water at a volume phase transition temperature, VPTT $\sim$33$^\circ$C. Romeo et al. [Adv. Mater. 2010,…
Effect of confinement on the liquid-liquid transition of water are studied by simulations in the Gibbs ensemble. Upon cooling along the liquid-vapor coexistence curve, confined water undergoes transition from normal to strongly tetrahedral…
Viscoelastic liquid transfer from one surface to another is a process that finds applications in many technologies, primarily in printing. Here, cylindrical shaped capillary bridges pinned between two parallel disks are considered.…
Polarization dependence of opto-mechanical behavior of monodomain photochromic glassy liquid crystal (LC) polymers under polarized ultraviolet light (PUV) is studied. Trans-cis photo-isomerization is generally known to be most intense at…
The influence of the molecular structure of the nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on the photoalignment process at the NLC -- polymer interface has been investigated experimentally. NLCs having exclusively phenyl-, or cyclohexane rings in the…
We present confocal microscopy studies of novel particle-stabilized emulsions. The novelty arises because the immiscible fluids have an accessible upper critical solution temperature. The emulsions have been created by beginning with…
We have employed molecular dynamics simulations based on the TIP4P/2005 water model to investigate the local structural, dynamical, and dielectric properties of the two recently reported body-centered-cubic and face-centered-cubic plastic…
Ultrasoft colloids typically do not spontaneously crystallize, but rather vitrify, at high concentrations. Combining in-situ rheo-SANS experiments and numerical simulations we show that shear facilitates crystallization of colloidal star…
Enormous enhancement in the viscosity of a liquid near its glass transition is generally connected to the growing many-body static correlations near the transition, often coined as `amorphous ordering'. Estimating the length scales of such…