Related papers: Epithelia are multiscale active liquid crystals
The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smectic-like cybotactic clusters which are promising in terms of…
Experiments and theory have shown that cell monolayers and epithelial tissues exhibit solid-liquid and glass-liquid transitions. These transitions are biologically relevant to our understanding of embryonic development, wound healing, and…
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…
The recent discovery of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases marks a major breakthrough in soft matter research. An intermediate phase, often observed between the nonpolar and the ferroelectric nematic phase, shows a distinct…
We apply density functional theory to study the influence of polydispersity on the stability of columnar, smectic and solid ordering in the solutions of rodlike macromolecules. For sufficiently large length polydispersity (standard…
Shape-morphing networks of mesoscale filaments are a common hierarchical feature in biology and hold significant potential for a range of technological applications, from micro-muscles to shape-morphing optical devices. Here, we demonstrate…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
Real-life bacteria often swim in complex fluids, but our understanding of the interactions between bacteria and complex surroundings is still evolving. In this work, rod-like \textit{Bacillus subtilis} swims in a quasi-2D environment with…
In many biological materials with a hierarchical structure there is an intriguing and unique mechanism responsible for the 'propagation' of order from the molecular to the nano- or micro-scale level. Here we present a much simpler molecular…
By molecular modeling we demonstrate that the nematic long-range order discovered in bent-core liquid crystal systems should reveal further spatially homogeneous phases. Two of them are identified as a tetrahedratic nematic ($N_T$) phase…
Recent experiments on vesicles formed from block copolymers with liquid-crystalline side-chains reveal a rich variety of vesicle morphologies. The additional internal order ("structure") developed by these self-assembled block copolymer…
Even though chiral nematic phases were the first liquid crystals experimentally observed more than a century ago, the origin of the thermodynamic stability of cholesteric states is still unclear. In this Letter we address the problem by…
Thin solids often develop elastic instabilities and subsequently complex, multiscale deformation patterns. Revealing the organizing principles of this spatial complexity has ramifications for our understanding of morphogenetic processes in…
The properties of liquid crystals can be modelled using an order parameter which describes the variability of the local orientation of rod-like molecules. Defects in the director field can arise due to external factors such as applied…
Liquid crystals have attracted enormous interest because of the variety of their phases and richness of their application. The interplay of general physical symmetries and specific molecular features generates a myriad of different…
Phase-ordering dynamics in nematic liquid crystals has been the subject of much active investigation in recent years in theory, experiments and simulations. With a rapid quench from the isotropic to nematic phase a large number of…
There are two competing descriptions of nematic liquid crystal dynamics: the Ericksen-Leslie director theory and the Eringen micropolar approach. Up to this day, these two descriptions have remained distinct in spite of several attempts to…
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…
In two-dimensional tissues, such as developing germ layers, pair-wise forces (or active stresses) arise from the contractile activity of the cytoskeleton, with dissipation provided by the three-dimensional surroundings. We show analytically…
Modeling and simulation studies using a high-order Landau-de Gennes type model for the direct isotropic/smectic-A liquid crystal transition are presented showing the existence of meta-stable nematic pre-ordering under certain conditions, in…