Related papers: Shape Bistability in Squeezed Chromonic Droplets
The ability to manipulate polar entities with multiple external fields opens exciting possibilities for emerging functionalities and novel applications in spin systems, photonics, metamaterials, and soft matter. Liquid crystals (LCs),…
We present a molecular dynamics study of the motion of cylindrical polymer droplets on striped surfaces. We first consider the equilibrium properties of droplets on different surfaces, we show that for small stripes the Cassie-Baxter…
A model system is proposed to investigate the chemical equilibrium and mechanical stability of biological spherical-like nanoshells in contact with an aqueous solution with added dissociated electrolyte of a given concentration. The ionic…
The shapes of liquid polystyrene (PS) droplets on viscoelastic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates are investigated experimentally using atomic force microscopy for a range of droplet sizes and substrate elasticities. These shapes, which…
Many lyotropic liquid crystals are composed of mesogens that display a considerable spread in size or shape affecting their material properties and thermodynamics via various demixing and multi-phase coexistence scenarios. Starting from a…
Lyotropic liquid crystals can display rich phase behaviour and self-organisation, yet the physical principles underlying their self-assembly into large scale patterns remains understudied. Here, we combine theory, simulations and…
We study dilute suspensions of magnetic nanoparticles in a nematic host, on two-dimensional (2D) polygons. These systems are described by a nematic order parameter and a spontaneous magnetization, in the absence of any external fields. We…
Scaled particle theory for a binary mixture of hard discorectangles and for a binary mixture of hard rectangles is used to predict possible liquid-crystal demixing scenarios in two dimensions. Through a bifurcation analysis from the…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
The equilibrium properties of polymer droplets on a soft deformable surface are investigated by molecular dynamics simulations of a bead-spring model. The surface consists of a polymer brush with irreversibly end-tethered linear homopolymer…
Present work is a theoretical study on the stability of the thermotropic biaxial nematic liquid crystal phase in model systems. Its main aim is to present the phase diagrams of spatially uniform liquid mesophases and to identify the…
We generalize the shape optimization problem for the existence of stable equilibrium configurations of nematic and cholesteric liquid crystal drops surrounded by an isotropic solution to include a broader family of admissible domains with…
We calculate the interaction between two spherical colloidal particles embedded in the isotropic phase of a nematogenic liquid. The surface of the particles induces wetting nematic coronas that mediate an elastic interaction. In the weak…
There is considerable interest in understanding and controlling topological defects in nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Confinement, in the form of droplets, has been particularly effective in that regard. Here, we employ the Landau-de Gennes…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
We investigate the switching dynamics of multistable nematic liquid crystal devices. In particular we identify a remarkably simple 2-dimensional (2D) device which exploits hybrid alignment at the surfaces to yield a bistable response. We…
Mono-layers of stearic and behenic acids deposited with the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, were used as aligning films in nematic liquid crystal cells. During the filling process the liquid crystal adopts a deformed quasi-planar alignment…
A new class of pattern forming systems is identified and investigated: anisotropic systems that are spatially inhomogeneous along the direction perpendicular to the preferred one. By studying the generic amplitude equation of this new class…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…
Chromonics are special classes of nematic liquid crystals, for which a quartic elastic theory seems to be more appropriate than the classical quadratic Oseen-Frank theory. The relaxation dynamics of twist director profiles are known to…