Related papers: Director alignment at the nematic-isotropic interf…
Polymers are a primary building block in many biomaterials, often interacting with anisotropic backgrounds. While previous studies have considered polymer dynamics within nematic solvents, rarely are the the effects of anisotropic viscosity…
We study theoretically the formation of long-wavelength instability patterns observed at spreading of nematic droplets on liquid substrates. The role of surface-like elastic terms such as saddle-splay and anchoring in nematic films of…
Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton…
Cell monolayers are a central model system to tissue biophysics. In vivo, epithelial tissues are curved on the scale of microns, and curvature's role in the onset of spontaneous tissue flows is still not well-understood. Here, we present a…
We analyze a model of mutually-propelled filaments suspended in a two-dimensional solvent. The system undergoes a mean-field isotropic-nematic transition for large enough filament concentrations and the nematic order parameter is allowed to…
Active nematic systems consist of rod-like internally driven subunits that interact with one another to form large-scale coherent flows. They are important examples of far-from-equilibrium fluids, which exhibit a wealth of nonlinear…
The quantitative knowledge of interface anisotropy in lattice models is a major issue, both for the parametrization of continuum interface models, and for the analysis of experimental observations. In this paper, we focus on the anisotropy…
Emulsions comprising isotropic fluid drops within a nematic host are of interest for applications ranging from biodetection to smart windows, which rely on changes of molecular alignment structures around the drops in response to chemical,…
Motivated by recent experiments on growing fibroblasts, we examine the development of nematic order in a colony of elongated cells proliferating on a nematic elastomer substrate. After sparse seeding, the cells divide and grow into locally…
Nematic tactoids are spindle-shaped droplets of a nematic phase nucleated in the co-existing isotropic phase. According to equilibrium theory, their internal structure and shape are controlled by a balance between the elastic deformation of…
Mixing colloid shapes with distinctly different anisotropy generates composite nematics in which the order of the individual components can be fundamentally different. In colloidal rod-disk mixtures or hybrid nematics composed of…
Monte Carlo simulation, experiment and continuum theory are used to examine the anchoring exhibited by a nematic liquid crystal at a patterned substrate comprising a periodic array of rectangles that, respectively, promote vertical and…
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…
In this work we present the first systematic framework to sculpt active nematics systems, using optimal control theory and a hydrodynamic model of active nematics. We demonstrate the use of two different control fields, (1) applied…
Motivated by results for the propagation of active-passive interfaces of bacterial Serratia marcescens swarms [Nat. Comm., 9, 5373 (2018)] we use a hydrodynamic multiphase model to investigate the propagation of interfaces of active…
We analyze the interplay between wetting and anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on disordering, e.g., rough substrates in the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory, in situations of competing homeotropic and planar easy axes on 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…
We present numerical and analytic results for uniaxial and biaxial order at the isotropic-nematic interface within Ginzburg-Landau-de Gennes theory. We study the case where an oblique anchoring condition is imposed asymptotically on the…
"Active nematics" are orientationally ordered but apolar fluids composed of interacting constituents individually powered by an internal source of energy. When activity exceeds a system-size dependent threshold, spatially uniform active…
Controlling interfaces of phase separating fluid mixtures is key to creating diverse functional soft materials. Traditionally, this is accomplished with surface-modifying chemical agents. Using experiment and theory, we study how mechanical…