Related papers: Colloidal Directional Structures at a Nematic Liqu…
Assembly of colloidal particles on fluid interfaces is a promising technique for synthesizing two-dimensional micro-crystalline materials useful in fields as diverse as biomedicine1, materials science2, mineral flotation3 and food…
Directional optical sources can give rise to the directional excitation and propagation of light. The directionality of the conventional directional dipole (CDD) sources are attributed to the interference of the electric and/or magnetic…
We demonstrate the realization of (laterally) optically bounded colloidal structures on a liquid-liquid interface of an emulsion droplet. We use DNA tethers to graft the particles to the droplet surface, effectively confining them to a…
Liquid crystals formed by acute-angle bent-core (ABC) molecules with a 1,7 naphthalene central core show an intriguing phase behavior with the nematic phase accompanied by poorly understood additional phases. In this work, we characterize…
Optical microscopy and multi-particle tracking are used to investigate the cross-correlated diffusion of quasi two-dimensional (2D) colloidal particles near an oil-water interface. It is shown that the effect of the interface on correlated…
Complex colloidal cluster morphologies are desirable for the fabrication of advanced materials, such as photonic crystals and meta-materials, and can be formed through evaporation-driven packing. By coupling lattice Boltzmann and discrete…
This study explores the mechanisms behind the helical structures in cholesteric liquid crystalline (CLC) phases using molecular dynamics simulations. By adding chiral agents to the nematic liquid crystalline (NLC) compound, 5CB, the…
In experiments, an individual chemically active liquid crystal (LC) droplet submerged in the bulk of a surfactant solution may self-propel along a straight, helical, or random trajectory. In this paper, we develop a minimal model capturing…
Lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) represent aqueous dispersions of organic disk-like molecules that form cylindrical aggregates. Despite the growing interest in these materials, their flow behavior is poorly understood. Here, we…
Colloidal dispersions are commonly encountered in everyday life and represent an important class of complex fluid. Of particular significance for many commercial products and industrial processes is the ability to control and manipulate the…
We report curling self-propulsion in aqueous emulsions of common mesogenic compounds. Nematic liquid crystal droplets self-propel in a surfactant solution with concentrations above the critical micelle concentration while undergoing…
We address experimentally the problem of how the structure of a surface monolayer determines the visco-elasticity of the interface. Optical microscopy and surface quasi--elastic light scattering have been used to characterize aggregation of…
We review and compare recent work on the properties of fluctuating interfaces between nematic and isotropic liquid-crystalline phases. Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for systems of ellipsoids and hard…
A two-dimensional or quasi-two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal refers to a surface confined system. When such a system is further confined by external line boundaries or excluded from internal line boundaries, the nematic directors form…
Colloidal assembly at fluid interfaces has a great potential for the bottom-up fabrication of novel structured materials. However, challenges remain in realizing controllable and tunable assembly of particles into diverse structures.…
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix,…
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…
We study the two-dimensional domain morphology of twisted nematic liquid crystals during their phase-ordering kinetics [R. A. L. Almeida, Phys. Rev. Lett. 131 (2023) 268101], which is a physical candidate to self-generate critical clusters…
From the theory of topological defect formation proposed for the early universe, the so called Kibble mechanism, it follows that the density correlation functions of defects and anti-defects in a given system should be completely determined…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…