Related papers: Shape instabilities driven by topological defects …
Freestanding tubular crystals offer a general description of crystalline order on deformable surfaces with cylindrical topology, such as single-walled carbon nanotubes, microtubules, and recently reported colloidal assemblies. These systems…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) marry the large deformation response of a cross-linked polymer network with the nematic order of liquid crystals pendent to the network. Of particular interest is the actuation of LCE sheets where the…
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
The structure of polymer networks, defined by chain lengths and connectivity patterns, fundamentally influences their bulk properties. While existing polymer network models connect chain properties to emergent network behavior, they are…
Point-like motile topological defects control the universal dynamics of diverse two-dimensional active nematics ranging from shaken granular rods to cellular monolayers. A comparable understanding in higher dimensions has yet to emerge. We…
Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…
Active materials are those in which individual, uncoordinated local stresses drive the material out of equilibrium on a global scale. Examples of such assemblies can be seen across scales from schools of fish to the cellular cytoskeleton…
In 3D nematic liquid crystals, disclination lines have a range of geometric structures. Locally, they may resemble $+1/2$ or $-1/2$ defects in 2D nematic phases, or they may have 3D twist. Here, we analyze the structure in terms of the…
In two dimensional nematics, topological defects are point like singularities with both a charge and a phase. We study topological defects within curved nematic textures on the surface of a cylinder. This allows us to isolate the effect of…
Dislocations, as topological defects in crystal lattices, are fundamental to understanding plasticity in materials. Similar periodic structures also arise in continuum field theories, such as chiral soliton lattices (CSLs), which appear in…
A hallmark feature of topologically ordered states of matter is the dependence of ground state degeneracy (GSD) on the topology of the manifold determined by the global shape of the system. Although the topology of a physical system is…
Understanding the relationship between the microscopic structure and topology of a material and its macroscopic properties is a fundamental challenge across a wide range of systems. Here, we investigate the viscoelasticity of DNA nanostar…
We present a theoretical study of the director fields and energetics of nematic liquid crystal shells with two pairs of surface defects. The pairs of defects can undergo abrupt transitions between a configuration of maximum separation to at…
Live cells have ambiguous mechanical properties. They were often described as either elastic solids or viscoelastic fluids and have recently been classified as soft glassy materials characterized by weak power-law rheology. Nonlinear…
Rational control over the periodic arrangement of particles by means of external stimuli is a technologically important aspect of colloidal science with important physical underpinnings. Here, a robust structural control of particle…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
Nematic solids respond strongly to changes in ambient heat or light, significantly differently parallel and perpendicular to the director. This phenomenon is well characterized for uniform director fields, but not for defect textures. We…
Starting from a three-dimensional description of an active nematic layer, we employ an asymptotic theory to derive a series of low-dimensional continuum models that capture the coupled dynamics of flat and curved films, including variations…
We present a novel framework for the study of disclinations in two-dimensional active nematic liquid crystals, and topological defects in general. The order tensor formalism is used to calculate exact multi-particle solutions of the…
Nematic polymer networks (NPNs) are nematic elastomers within which the nematic director is enslaved to the elastic deformation. The elastic free energy of a NPN sheet of thickness $h$ has both stretching and bending components (the former…