Related papers: Exploring phase transitions and thermal dynamics i…
A high-resolution calorimetric study has been carried out on nano-colloidal dispersions of aerosils in the liquid crystal 4-\textit{n}-pentylphenylthiol-4'-\textit{n}-octyloxybenzoate ($\bar{8}$S5) as a function of aerosil concentration and…
The effects of dispersed aerosil nanoparticles on two of the phase transitions of the thermotropic liquid crystal material 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate 8barS5 have been studied using high-resolution x-ray diffraction…
The twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase is a recent addition to the nematic (N) phases of liquid crystals (LCs). A net polar order in the Ntb phase under an external electric field was predicted in several recent theoretical studies but yet to…
We report filling-fraction dependent dielectric spectroscopy measurements on the relaxation dynamics of the rod-like nematogen 7CB condensed in 13 nm silica nanochannels. In the film-condensed regime, a slow interface relaxation dominates…
Confinement in the nanochannels of porous silicon strongly affects the phase behavior of the archetype liquid-crystal 4-n-octyl-4-cyanobiphenyl (8CB). A very striking phenom- enon is the development of a short-range smectic order, which…
The continuous nematic to smectic-A (N-SmA) phase transition has been studied by high-resolution ac-calorimetry in binary mixtures of the liquid crystal octylcyanobiphenyl(8CB) and a non-mesogenic, low-molecular weight, solvent…
High-resolution ac-calorimetry has been carried out on dispersions of aerosils in the liquid crystal octyloxycyanobiphenyl (8OCB) as a function of aerosil concentration and temperature spanning the crystal to isotropic phases. The…
Liquid crystals (LCs) play a fundamental and significant role in modern technology. Recently, they have also been used in active switching, adaptive optics, and next-generation displays for augmented and virtual reality. This is due to the…
We have studied the effects of quenched random disorder created by dispersed aerosil nanoparticle gels on the nematic to smectic-A (N-SmA) and smectic-A to reentrant nematic (SmA- RN) phase transitions of thermotropic liquid crystal…
Motile liquid crystal (LC) colloids show peculiar behavior due to the high sensitivity to external stimuli driven by the LC elastic and surface effects. However, few studies focus on harnessing the LC phase transitions to propel colloidal…
A high-resolution dielectric and calorimetric study of the isotropic (I) to nematic (N) phase transition of carbon nanotube (CNT) dispersed liquid crystal (LC) functional composites as a function of CNT concentration is reported. The…
Certain nematic liquid crystals, e.g., those formed by banana-shaped molecules, can exhibit a low-temperature twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase. Upon addition of chiral dopants, a chiral version of the twist-bend phase (N*tb) can be observed…
Emerging technologies based on liquid crystal (LC) materials increasingly leverage the presence of nanoscale defects, unlike the canonical application of LCs -- LC displays. The inherent nanoscale characteristics of LC defects present both…
The effects of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (NTs) on low-temperature phase transformations in 5CB were studied by means of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), low-temperature photoluminescence and measurements of electrical…
Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were conducted using the generalized replica exchange method (gREM) on the 4-cyano-4$^{\prime}$-$n$-alkylbiphenyl ($n$CB) system with $n=5$, 6, 7, and 8, which exhibits a nematic-isotropic (NI) phase…
The experimental and theoretical study of the electrorheological (ER) effect observed in the nematic phase of the 4-n-hepthyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (K21) is the aim of this work. The K21 liquid crystal (LC) appears to be a model system where all…
The ferroelectric nematic phase (NF) is a recently discovered phase of matter in which the orientational order of the conventional nematic liquid crystal state is augmented with polar order. Atomistic simulations suggest that the polar NF…
Comprehensive x-ray scattering studies have characterized the smectic ordering of octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined in the hydrogen-bonded silica gels formed by aerosil dispersions. For all densities of aerosil and all measurement…
4-n-octyl-4-cyanobiphenyl (8CB) has been recently shown to display an unusual sequence of phases when confined into porous silicon (PSi). The gradual increase of oriented short-range smectic (SRS) correlations in place of a phase transition…
Blue phase liquid crystal (BPLC) has important applications in adaptive lenses and phase modulators due to its polarization-independent property. During our efforts for development of the new materials, we found a novel phenomenology of…