Related papers: Time dependent lyotropic chromonic textures in PDM…
Dynamically tunable nanoengineered structures for coloration show promising applications in sensing, displays, and communication. However, their potential challenge remains in having a scalable manufacturing process over large scales in…
Filamentous bacteriophages fd are viral particles, highly monodisperse in size, that have been widely used as a model colloidal system for studying the self-assembly of rod-shaped particles as well as a versatile template in nanoscience. In…
Nematic liquid crystal (LC) is a partially ordered matter that has been a popular model system for studying a variety of topological behaviors in condensed matter. In this work, utilizing a spontaneously twisting achiral LC, we introduce a…
Using video microscopy, we measure local spatial constraints in disordered binary colloidal samples, ranging from dilute fluids to jammed glasses, and probe their spatial and temporal correlations to local dynamics during the glass…
Capillary microflows of liquid crystal phases are central to material, biological and bio-inspired systems. Despite their fundamental and applied significance, a detailed understanding of the stationary behaviour of nematic liquid crystals…
The mechanical properties of crystalline materials can be substantially modified under confinement. Such modified macroscopic properties are usually governed by the altered microstructures and internal stress fields. Here, we use a parallel…
We study droplets of chromonic liquid crystals squeezed between parallel plates inducing degenerate tangential anchoring on the nematic director. In the coexistence regime, where droplets in the nematic phase are at equilibrium with the…
Nematic phase is the most fundamental mesophase exhibited by most of the rod shaped anisotropic liquid crystalline molecules. Nematics are orientationally ordered fluids whose average orientation direction can be manipulated on application…
Spherical microparticles dispersed in nematic liquid crystals have been extensively investigated in the past years. Here, we report experimental studies on the elastic deformation, colloidal interaction and self-assembly of hematite…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) composites have long been a focus of study for their unique electro-optical properties which have resulted in various applications such as switchable (transparent/translucent) windows. These…
Rod-like objects at high packing fractions can form smectic phases, where the rods break rotational and translational symmetry by forming lamellae. Smectic defects thereby include both discontinuities in the rod orientational order…
Ferronematic phases, composed of liquid crystals doped with magnetic nanoparticles, exhibit unique magnetomechanical coupling effects that are of interest for responsive materials. In this study, we investigate the influence of…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
Using dynamic light scattering, we measure for the first time the temperature-dependent elastic moduli and associated orientational viscosity coefficients of the nematic phase in a self-assembled lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal. The bend…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
A discrete time crystal (DTC) is the paradigmatic example of a phase of matter that occurs exclusively in systems out of equilibrium. This phenomenon is characterized by the spontaneous symmetry breaking of discrete time-translation and…
Chromonic liquid crystals are lyotropic nematic phases whose applications span from food to drug industries. It has recently been suggested that the elastic energy density governing the equilibrium distortions of these materials may be…
Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…