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Biaxial nematic ($N_B$) liquid crystals have been indicated as promising candidates for the design of next-generation displays with novel electro-optical properties and faster switching times. While at the molecular scale their existence is…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
It is well known that understanding the transport properties of liquid crystals (LCs) is crucial to optimise their performance in a number of technological applications. In this work, we analyse the effect of shape anisotropy on the…
We study the coarsening dynamics of two and three dimensional biaxial nematic liquid crystals, using Langevin dynamics. Unlike previous work, we use a model with no a priori relationship among the three elastic constants associated with…
As recently reported [Turiv T. et al., Science, 2013, Vol. 342, 1351], fluctuations in the orientation of the liquid crystal (LC) director can transfer momentum from the LC to a colloid, such that the diffusion of the colloid becomes…
Colloidal particles suspended in liquid crystals can exhibit various effective anisotropic interactions that can be tuned and utilized in self-assembly processes. We simulate a two-dimensional system of hard disks suspended in a solution of…
One of the central experimental efforts in nematic colloids research aims to explore how the interplay between the geometry of particles along with the accompanying nematic director deformations and defects around them can provide a means…
Macromolecular diffusion in dense colloidal suspensions is an intriguing topic of interdisciplinary relevance in Science and Engineering. While significant efforts have been undertaken to establish the impact of crowding on the dynamics of…
We study the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional concentrated suspensions of colloidal particles in active gels by computer simulations. Remarkably, we find that activity induces a dynamic clustering of colloids even in the absence of any…
We investigate the turbulent dynamics of a two-dimensional active nematic liquid crystal con- strained on a curved surface. Using a combination of hydrodynamic and particle-based simulations, we demonstrate that the fundamental structural…
Successful realization of ferromagnetic nematic liquid crystals has opened up the possibility to experimentally study a completely new set of fundamental physical phenomena. In this contribution we present a detailed investigation of some…
By means of computer simulations we study how droplets of hard, rod-like particles optimize their shape and internal structure under the influence of the osmotic compression caused by the presence of spherical particles that act as…
Nematic liquid crystals are well modeled as a fluid of rigid rods. Starting from this model, we use a Poisson-bracket formalism to derive the equations governing the dynamics of nematic liquid crystals. We treat the spin angular momentum…
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…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
A theoretical analysis is presented of a nematic liquid crystal confined between substrates pat- terned with squares that promote vertical and planar alignment. Two approaches are used to eluci- date the behavior across a wide range of…
We have investigated the slow dynamics of ultrasoft particles in crystalline cluster phases, where point particles interact through the generalized exponential potential u(r) = \epsilon \exp[-(r/\sigma)^n], focusing on the cluster fcc phase…
Colloidal rods immersed in a thermotropic liquid-crystalline solvent are at the basis of so-called hybrid liquid crystals which are characterized by tunable nematic fluidity with symmetries ranging from conventional uniaxial nematic or…
Understanding how colloidal suspensions behave in confined environments has a striking relevance in practical applications. Despite the fact that the behaviour of colloids in the bulk is key to identify the main elements affecting their…
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…