Related papers: A theoretical model for power generation via liqui…
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…
We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on the Leslie-Ericksen theory of liquid crystal flow. Our goal is to investigate the nonlinear electrokinetic effects that occur because the nematic matrix is anisotropic, in…
Stability is an important and fruitful avenue of research for liquid crystal elastomers. At constant temperature, upon stretching, the homogeneous state of a nematic body becomes unstable, and alternating shear stripes develop at very low…
Deformations of amorphous polymer networks prepared with significant concentrations of liquid crystalline mesogens have been recently reported to undergo mechanotropic phase transitions. Here, we report that these mechanotropic phase…
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…
We explore micropatterned director structures of aqueous lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal (LCLC) films created on square lattice cylindrical-micropost substrates. The structures are manipulated by modulating the LCLC mesophases and their…
Liquid Crystal Elastomers (LCEs) are an exciting category of material that has tremendous application potential across a variety of fields, owing to their unique properties that enable both sensing and actuation. To some, LCEs are simply…
In vivo and in vitro systems of cells and extra-cellular matrix (ECM) systems are well known to form ordered patterns of orientationally aligned fibers. Here, we interpret them as active analogs of the (disordered) isotropic to the…
Cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers have interesting and potentially very useful photonic properties. In an ideal monodomain configuration of these materials, one finds a Bragg-reflection of light in a narrow wavelength range and a…
We elucidate the polymer dynamics of a liquid crystal elastomer based on the time-dependent response of the pendent liquid crystal mesogens. The molecular tilt and switching time of mesogens are analyzed as a function of temperature and…
Nematic polymeric networks are (heat and light) activable materials, which combine the features of rubber and nematic liquid crystals. When only the stretching energy of a thin sheet of nematic polymeric network is minimized, the intrinsic…
Nematic liquid crystals in a polyhedral domain, a prototype for bistable displays, may be described by a unit-vector field subject to tangent boundary conditions. Here we consider the case of a rectangular prism. For configurations with…
We study the phase behavior of a nematic liquid crystal confined between a flat substrate with strong anchoring and a patterned substrate whose structure and local anchoring strength we vary. By first evaluating an effective surface free…
A liquid crystal optical device made of an optically anisotropic heterostructure is considered. The device consists of a cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) layer sandwiched by two phase-shifting anisotropic layers of a nematic liquid crystal…
We use a variational principle to derive a mathematical model for a nematic electrolyte in which the liquid crystalline component is described in terms of a second-rank order tensor. The model extends the previously developed director-based…
When liquid-crystalline elastomers pass through the isotropic-nematic transition, the orientational order parameter and the elastic strain vary rapidly but smoothly, without the expected first-order discontinuity. This broadening of the…
We describe electrophoresis of spherical dielectric particles in a uniformly aligned nematic medium with a negative dielectric anisotropy. A spherical particle that orients the liquid crystal (LC) perpendicularly to its surface moves under…
We demonstrate several examples of driving and steering of colloids when dispersed in nematic liquid crystals. The driving mechanism is based on the principle of nonlinear electrophoresis which is mediated by the asymmetry in the structure…
Long-range e.g. Coulomb-like interactions for (quantized) topological charges are observed experimentally in liquid crystals, bringing open question this article is exploring: how far can we take this resemblance with particle physics?…
Interactions between active individuals in animal collectives lead to emergent responses that remain elusive in synthetic soft matter. Here, shape-morphing polymers are used to create bio-inspired transient solids that self-assemble with…