Related papers: Light-responsive nematic colloids and colloidal cr…
Colloidal particles dispersed in a partially ordered medium, such as a liquid crystal (LC) phase, disturb its alignment and are subject to elastic forces. These forces are long-ranged, anisotropic and tunable through temperature or external…
Liquid crystals have proven to provide a versatile experimental and theoretical platform for studying topological objects such as vortices, skyrmions, and hopfions. In parallel, in hard condensed matter physics, the concept of topological…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
We demonstrate facile optical manipulation of shape of birefringent colloidal microparticles made from liquid crystal elastomers. Using soft lithography and polymerization, we fabricate elastomeric microcylinders with weakly undulating…
Self-organization of nanoparticles is a major issue to synthesize mesoscopic structures. Among the possible mechanisms leading to self-organization, the oriented attachment is efficient yet not completely understood. We investigate here the…
Anisotropic fluids appear in a diverse array of systems, from liquid-crystal displays to bacterial swarms, and are characterized by orientational order. Large colloidal particles immersed in such environments disturb the medium's…
Self-assembly processes allow us to design and create complex nanostructures using molecules as building blocks and surfaces as scaffolds. This autonomous driven construction is possible due to a complex thermodynamic balance of…
The theory of elastic interaction of micron size axially symmetric colloidal particles immersed into confined nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. General formulas are obtained for the self energy of one colloidal particle and…
Motile living organisms routinely probe their surroundings to adapt in ever-evolving environments. Although synthetic microswimmers offer surrogates for self-propelled living entities, they often lack the complex feedback mechanisms that…
To enhance the understanding of the behavior of active nematic, it is important to understand the behavior of topological defects. In this paper, we study the configuration of topological defects of a two-dimensional active nematic around a…
The reorientational nonlinearity of nematic liquid crystals enables a self-localized spatial soliton and its waveguide to be deflected or destroyed by a control beam propagating across the cell. We demonstrate a simple all-optical…
Deterministic control of excitonic properties is key to advancing nanoscale optoelectronic and quantum technologies and to understanding diverse physical, optical, chemical, and biological phenomena. At the molecular scale, these properties…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…
We predict theoretically the existence of a class of colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal (NLC) cells, which are induced by surface patterns on the plates of the cell (like cells with UV-irradiated polyimide surfaces using micron…
Area-selective atomic layer deposition is a key technology for modern microelectronics as it eliminates alignment errors inherent to conventional approaches by enabling material deposition only in specific areas. Typically, the selectivity…
A promising approach of designing mesostructured materials with novel physical behavior is to combine unique optical and electronic properties of solid nanoparticles with long-range ordering and facile response of soft matter to weak…
We explore the structure of nuclei and topological defects in the first-order phase transition between the nematic (N) and isotropic (I) phases in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs). The LCLCs are formed by self-assembled molecular…
Cholesteric liquid crystals can exhibit spatial patterns in molecular alignment at interfaces that can be exploited for particle assembly. These patterns emerge from the competition between bulk and surface energies, tunable with the system…
Peculiarities of the defect modes of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) with an isotropic/anisotropic defect inside are investigated. The influence of the defect layer thickness and its anisotropy of refraction, the influence of the system…