Related papers: Double Splay Nematic Order in Confined Polar Fluid…
Ground states of materials with orientational order ranging from solid ferromagnets and ferroelectrics to liquid crystals often contain spatially varying vector-like order parameter caused by inner factors such as the shape of building…
Recent theoretical research has developed a general framework to understand director deformations and modulated phases in nematic liquid crystals. In this framework, there are four fundamental director deformation modes: twist, bend, splay,…
We study the spontaneous breaking of rotational symmetry in the helical surface state of three-dimensional topological insulators due to strong electron-electron interactions, focusing on time-reversal invariant nematic order. Owing to the…
We report the properties of two new series of compounds that show the ferroelectric nematic phase in which the length of a terminal chain is varied. The longer the terminal chain, the weaker the dipole-dipole interactions of the molecules…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
Polar metals, materials in which electric polarisation and metallicity coexist, are exceptionally rare because itinerant electrons screen long-range dipoles and favour centrosymmetric structures. Engineering polar textures in a conducting…
Fluid molecular ferroelectrics are a new class of organic materials where ferroelectricity is found in conjunction with 3D fluidity whilst still retaining spontaneous polarization values comparable to their traditional solid state…
The recent discovery of nematic liquid crystals with polar order (ferroelectric nematic) has created immense interest. Despite intensive research, several physical properties of this liquid crystal are yet to be investigated and understood.…
The effect of confinement on the orientational structure of a nematic liquid crystal model has been investigated by using a version of density-functional theory (DFT). We have focused on the case of a nematic confined by opposing flat…
Polar nematic liquid crystals have two special features, compared with conventional nematic liquid crystals. First, because of flexoelectricity, the combination of polar order and splay reduces the free energy. Second, because of…
We use linear stability analysis to show that an isotropic phase of elongated particles with dipolar flow fields can develop nematic order as a result of their activity. We argue that ordering is favoured if the particles are flow-aligning…
Recently discovered ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystals are fluids with a polar orientational order. The electric polarization vector can be aligned by an electric field and by surface anchoring. Here, we explore how the polarization…
We use linear stability analysis and hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations to study the dynamical behaviour of an active nematic confined in a channel made of viscoelastic material. We find that the quiescent, ordered active nematic is…
An analysis of the IR absorbance for the segmented functional groups of liquid crystal dimers: mesogen and linker, enabled the orientation order to be determined and information about the dipole interactions in the nematic and twist-bend…
The dipole flexoelectric (FE) polarization in liquid crystals is derived in the thermodynamic limit at small distortions and small density. General microscopic expressions for the FE coefficients are obtained in the case of the uniaxial and…
We investigate fluids of dipolar hard particles by a certain variant of density-functional theory. The proper treatment of the long range of the dipolar interactions yields a contribution to the free energy which favors ferromagnetic order.…
We report the smectic $A_F$, a new liquid crystal phase of the ferroelectric nematic realm. The smectic $A_F$ is a phase of small polar, rod-shaped molecules which form two-dimensional fluid layers spaced by approximately the mean molecular…
In a recent letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 75}, 2360 (1996)] we briefly discussed the existence and nature of ferroelectric order in positionally disordered dipolar materials. Here we report further results and give a complete description of…
Ferroelectricity in atomically thin bilayer structures has been recently predicted1 and measured[2-4] in two-dimensional (2D) materials with hexagonal non-centrosymmetric unit-cells. Interestingly, the crystal symmetry translates lateral…
We investigate - with Monte Carlo computer simulations - the phase behaviour of dimeric colloidal molecules on periodic substrates with square symmetry. The molecules are formed in a two-dimensional suspension of like charged colloids…