Related papers: Dielectrowetting of a thin nematic liquid crystal …
Active control of wrinkling in soft film-substrate composites using electric fields is a critical challenge in tunable material systems. Here, we investigate the electro-mechanical instability of a soft dielectric film bonded to a…
Liquid crystals are phases of matter intermediate between crystals and liquids. Whereas classical liquid crystals have been known for a long time and are used in electro-optical displays, much less is known about their quantum counterparts.…
We study the instability of a thin film composed of two miscible fluids (binary fluid) placed on a solid planar surface. We include the fact that both the free surface and wetting energies depend on the mixture concentration. By assuming a…
The combination of large spontaneous polarization and fluidity makes the newly discovered ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phase (NF) responsive to electric fields in ways that have no counterpart in other materials. We probe this…
The weakly nonlinear dynamics of the free surface of a dielectric liquid in an electric field directed tangentially to the unperturbed boundary is investigated numerically. Within the framework of the strong field model, when the effects of…
In this work, we study the nematic-isotropic phase transition based on the dynamics of the Landau--De Gennes theory of liquid crystals. At the critical temperature, the Landau--De Gennes bulk potential favors the isotropic phase and nematic…
We study two-dimensional equilibrium configurations of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) director in a cell confined between two parallel surfaces: a planar surface and a spatially modulated one. The relief of the modulated surface is described…
In this paper, the two-dimensional pure bending of a hyperelastic substrate coated by a nematic liquid crystal elastomer (abbreviated as NLCE) is studied within the framework of nonlinear elasticity. The governing system, arising from the…
We consider free surface instabilities of films flowing on inverted substrates within the framework of lubrication approximation. We allow for the presence of fronts and related contact lines, and explore the role which they play in…
When a liquid film lies on a non-wettable substrate, the configuration is unstable and the film then retracts from a solid substrate to form droplets. This phenomenon, known as dewetting, commonly leads to undesirable morphological changes.…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
Liquid crystal elastomers realize a fascinating new form of soft matter that is a composite of a conventional crosslinked polymer gel (rubber) and a liquid crystal. These {\em solid} liquid crystal amalgams, quite similarly to their…
The recent discovery of the ferroelectric splay nematic phase has opened the door to experimental investigation of one of the most searched liquid crystal phases in decades, with high expectations for future applications. However, at this…
In search for novel nematic materials, a laterally linked H-shaped liquid crystal dimer have been synthesized and characterized. The distinct feature of the material is a very broad temperature range (about 50 oC) of the nematic phase,…
A thin liquid film with non-zero curvature at its free surface spontaneously flows to reach a flat configuration, a process driven by Laplace pressure gradients and resisted by the liquid's viscosity. Inspired by recent progresses on the…
Modeling liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) at the molecular level is crucial for the predictable design of energy-conversion and stimuli-responsive materials. Here, we develop a self-consistent field theory for LCEs which captures the…
Under the condition of partial surface wettability, thin liquid films can be destabilized by small perturbations and rupture into droplets. As successfully predicted by the thin film equation (TFE), the rupture dynamics are dictated by the…
We study theoretically the instabilities induced by a linearly polarized ordinary light wave incident at a small oblique angle on a thin layer of homeotropically oriented nematic liquid crystal with special emphasis on the dye-doped case.…
We report the experimental determination of the structure and response to applied electric field of the lower-temperature nematic phase of the previously reported calamitic compound 4-[(4-nitrophenoxy)carbonyl]phenyl2,4-dimethoxybenzoate…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…