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Instabilities in thin elastic sheets, such as wrinkles, are of broad interest both from a fundamental viewpoint and also because of their potential for engineering applications. Nematic liquid crystal elastomers offer a new form of control…
Understanding plastic deformation of crystals in terms of the fundamental physics of dislocations has remained a grand challenge in materials science for decades. To overcome this, the Discrete Dislocation Dynamics (DDD) method has been…
We summarise some recent results on solution landscapes for two-dimensional (2D) problems in the Landau--de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. We study energy-minimizing and non energy-minimizing solutions of the Euler--Lagrange…
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…
Although pathway-specific kinetic theories are fundamentally important to describe and understand reversible polymerisation kinetics, they come in principle at a cost of having a large number of system-specific parameters. Here, we…
We consider the diffusion and spreading of chainlike molecules on solid surfaces. We first show that the steep spherical cap shape density profiles, observed in some submonolayer experiments on spreading polymer films, imply that the…
We investigate the asymptotic behaviour of a correlation function associated with a nematic liquid crystal system undergoing an isotropic-nematic phase transition following an instantaneous change of temperature. Within the setting of…
Azo-dye-doped liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are known to show a strong photomechanical response. We report on experiments that suggest that photothermal heating is the underlying mechanism in surface-constrained geometry. In particular,…
The guest-host liquid crystal display, first proposed in 1968, relies on controlling the orientation of dichroic dyes dissolved in a nematic liquid crystal host. Controlling the orientation of the liquid crystal and of the dissolved dye…
Polymer gels are comprised of a three-dimensional, cross-linked network that can typically withstand the mechanical deformation associated with both swelling and de-swelling. Thus, gels can be designed with smart behaviors that require both…
Soft matters whose constituents are deformable are ubiquitous in nature especially in biological systems-including cells and their organelles-as well as in foams and emulsions. The capacity for deformation in these soft materials gives rise…
In this paper, we study an elastic bilayer plate composed of a nematic liquid crystal elastomer in the top layer and a nonlinearly elastic material in the bottom layer. While the bottom layer is assumed to be stress-free in the flat…
Liquid crystals are synthetic and biological viscoelastic anisotropic soft matter materials that combine liquid fluidity with crystal anisotropy and find use in optical devices, sensor/actuators, lubrication, super-fibers. Frequently…
Experimental and modeling/simulation studies of phase equilibrium and growth morphologies of novel polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) mixtures of PS (polystyrene) and liquid crystals that exhibit a direct isotropic/smectic-A (lamellar)…
A Langmuir film is a molecularly thin film on the surface of a fluid; we study the evolution of a Langmuir film with two co-existing fluid phases driven by an inter-phase line tension and damped by the viscous drag of the underlying…
A hydrostatically stressed soft elastic film circumvents the imposed constraint by undergoing a morphological instability, the wavelength of which is dictated by the minimization of the surface and the elastic strain energies of the film.…
Nematic liquid crystal (LC) molecules adsorbed on two dimensional materials are aligned along the crystal directions of the hexagonal lattice. It was demonstrated that short electric pulses can reorient the aligned LC molecules in the…
Nanoscale polymeric thin films are widely used in diverse applications such as energy devices, flexible electronics and biosensors, where a satisfactory mechanical performance is of vital importance to realize their full functionality. It…
Controlling the spatial distribution of liquid droplets on surfaces via surface energy patterning can be used to control material delivery to specified regions via selective liquid/solid wetting. While studies of the equilibrium shape of…
Microfluidic channels are integral to biomedical technology and process engineering, offering versatility in handling fluids with complex properties, often a combination of viscous and elastic attributes. Despite significant advancements in…