Related papers: Speeding up dynamics by tuning the non-commensurat…
We investigate the dynamic behavior of long guest rod-like particles immersed in liquid crystalline phases formed by shorter host rods, tracking both guest and host particles by fluorescence microscopy. Counter-intuitively, we evidence that…
We investigate the anomalous dynamics in smectic phases of short host rods where, counter-intuitively, long guest rod-shaped particles diffusive faster than the short host ones, due to their precise size mismatch. In addition to the…
We study the layer-to-layer diffusion in smectic-A liquid crystals of colloidal hard rods with different length-to-diameter ratios using computer simulations. The layered arrangement of the smectic phase yields a hopping-type diffusion due…
Using simulations of hard rods in smectic-A states, we find non-gaussian diffusion and heterogeneous dynamics due to the equilibrium periodic smectic density profiles, which give rise to permanent barriers for layer-to-layer diffusion. This…
Using computer simulations, we studied the diffusion and structural relaxation in equilibrium smectic liquid crystal bulk phases of parallel hard spherocylinders. These systems exhibit a non-Gaussian layer-to-layer diffusion due to the…
We report the direct visualization at the scale of single particles of mass transport between smectic layers, also called permeation, in a suspension of rod-like viruses. Self-diffusion takes place preferentially in the direction normal to…
By employing Molecular Dynamics computer simulations, the phase behavior of systems of rodlike particles with varying degree of internal flexibility has been traced from the perfectly rigid rod limit till very flexible particles, and from…
We report on a comprehensive computer simulation study of the liquid-crystal phase behaviour of purely repulsive, semi-flexible rod-like particles. For the four aspect ratios we consider, the particles form five distinct phases depending on…
Transport of rodlike particles in confinement environments of macromolecular networks plays crucial roles in many important biological processes and technological applications. The relevant understanding has been limited to thin rods with…
We report on the dynamics in colloidal suspensions of stiff viral rods, called fd-Y21M. This mutant filamentous virus exhibits a persistence length 3.5 times larger than the wild-type fd-wt. Such a virus system can be used as a model system…
We study the self diffusion of individual particles in dense (non-)uniform complex fluids within dynamic density functional theory and explicitly account for their coupling to the temporally fluctuating background particles. Applying the…
Lamellar or smectic phases often have an intricate intralamellar structure that remains scarcely understood from a microscopic viewpoint. In this work, we use molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of volume exclusion and…
Elongated colloidal rods at sufficient packing conditions are known to form stable lamellar or smectic phases. Using a simplified volume-exclusion model, we propose a generic equation-of-state for hard-rod smectics that is robust against…
The phase behavior of the system of parallel rigid triblock copolymers is examined using the second-virial density functional theory. The triblock particle consists of two identical infinitely thin hard rods of finite lengths on the…
Spatial diffusion of particles in periodic potential models has provided a good framework for studying the role of chaos in global properties of classical systems. Here a bidimensional "soft" billiard, classically modeled from an optical…
In the wake of previous studies on the rattling-and-jumping diffusion in smectic liquid crystal phases of colloidal rods, we analyze here for the first time the heterogeneous dynamics in columnar phases. More specifically, we perform…
It is known from grand canonical simulations of a system of hard rods on two dimensional lattices that an orientationally ordered nematic phase exists only when the length of the rods is at least seven. However, a recent microcanonical…
The surface phase behavior of binary mixtures of colloidal hard rods in contact with a solid substrate (hard wall) is studied, with special emphasis on the region of the phase diagram that includes the smectic A phase. The colloidal rods…
We present experimental measurements of the cholesteric-smectic phase transition of suspensions of charged semiflexible rods as a function of rod flexibility and surface charge. The rod particles consist of the bacteriophage M13 and closely…
We consider the rate of transition for a particle between two metastable states coupled to a thermal environment for various magnitudes of the coupling strength, using the recently proposed infrequent metadynamics approach (Tiwary and…