Related papers: Undulation instabilities in cholesteric liquid cry…
Most theoretical descriptions of lyotropic cholesteric liquid crystals to date focus on homogeneous systems in which the rod concentration, as opposed to the rod orientation, is uniform. In this work, we build upon the Onsager-Straley…
We theoretically investigate into the effects of the incidence angles in light transmission of cholesteric liquid crystal two-layer sandwich structures with twist defects created by rotation of the one layer about the helical axis.The…
We study the phase behaviour of a quasi-two dimensional cholesteric liquid crystal shell. We characterise the topological phases arising close to the isotropic-cholesteric transition, and show that they differ in a fundamental way from…
Flagellated microswimmers B. Subtilis dispersed in a nematic phase of a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal form a living liquid crystal (LLC). The combination of the passive and active components allows us to analyze how the active…
Using tools and concepts from contact topology we show that non-vanishing twist implies conservation of the layer structure in cholesteric liquid crystals. This leads to a number of additional topological invariants for cholesteric…
Using optical microscopy, phase shifting interferometry and atomic force microscopy, we demonstrate the existence of undulated structures in the meniscus of ferroelectric smectic-C* films. The meniscus is characterized by a periodic…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
A recent experiment showed that cylindrical segments of water filling a hydrophilic stripe on an otherwise hydrophobic surface display a capillary instability when their volume is increased beyond the critical volume at which their apparent…
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…
The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may…
It is shown that curved and flat helical double twisted liquid crystal (DTLC) in blue phase, can be unstable (stable) depending of the sign, negative (positive) of sectional curvature, depending on the pitch of the helix of the nematic…
The confining effect of a spherical substrate inducing anchoring (normal to the surface) of rod-like liquid crystal molecules contained in a thin film spread over it has been investigated with regard to possible changes in the nature of the…
Cholesteric liquid crystals exhibit great morphological richness of static metastable states. Understanding the transitions between such states is key for the development of switchable devices. We show, using a quasi-one-dimensional model,…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…
Chirality is a recurrent theme in the study of biological systems, in which active processes are driven by the internal conversion of chemical energy into work. Bacterial flagella, acto-myosin filaments and microtubule bundles are active…
Heliconical cholesteric liquid crystals are expected to be more sensitive to torque induced by light field since their structure allows both bend and twist in molecular orientations, differently from the conventional cholesterics in which…
We explore the rheology and flow-induced morphological changes of cholesteric liquid crystal patterns subject to Poiseuille flow within a slab geometry, and under different anchoring conditions at the wall. Our focus is particularly on the…
Understanding and controlling the director field configuration, shape, and orientation in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals is of fundamental importance in several branches of science. Liquid crystalline droplets, also known as…
We model within the framework of finite elasticity two inherent instabilities observed in liquid crystal elastomers under uniaxial tension. First is necking which occurs when a material sample suddenly elongates more in a small region where…