Related papers: Shape Elasticity in Colloidal Bent-Core Liquid Cry…
We carry out Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of molecular shape on liquid-crystal order. In our approach, each model mesogen consists of several soft spheres bonded rigidly together. The arrangement of the spheres may be…
The study of liquid crystals at equilibrium has led to fundamental insights into the nature of ordered materials, as well as to practical applications such as display technologies. Active nematics are a fundamentally different class of…
We study colloidal ordering and disordering on two-dimensional periodic substrates where the number of colloids per substrate minima is two or three. The colloids form dimer or trimer states with orientational ordering, referred to as…
Probing dynamic and static correlation in glass-forming supercooled liquids has been a challenge for decades in spite of extensive research. Dynamic correlation which manifests itself as Dynamic Heterogeneity is ubiquitous in a vast variety…
We consider a two-dimensional system of elongated particles driven over a random quenched disorder landscape. For varied pinning site density, external drive magnitude, and particle elongation, we find a wide variety of dynamic phases,…
We investigate the structure and equilibrium linear-response dynamics of suspensions of hard colloidal dumbbells using Brownian Dynamics computer simulations. The focus lies on the dense fluid and plastic crystal states of the colloids with…
Non-spherical emulsion droplets can be stabilized by densely packed colloidal particles adsorbed at their surface. In order to understand the microstructure of these surface packings, the ordering of hard spheres on ellipsoidal surfaces is…
Using a combination of theory and experiments we study the interface between two immiscible domains in a colloidal membrane composed of rigid rods of different lengths. Geometric considerations of rigid rod packing imply that a domain of…
Using extensive Monte Carlo (MC) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we investigate how spatial confinement affects molecular organization within thin films of the nematic twist-bend ($\mathrm{N_{TB}}$) phase. Our simulations show that…
Colloids are abundant in nature, science and technology, with examples ranging from milk to quantum dots and the "colloidal atom" paradigm. Similarly, liquid crystal ordering is important in contexts ranging from biological membranes to…
We extend our previous work on monolayers of uniaxial particles [J. Chem. Phys. 140, 204906 (2014)] to study the effect of particle biaxiality on the phase behavior of liquid-crystal monolayers. Particles are modelled as board-like hard…
Phase-ordering dynamics in nematic liquid crystals has been the subject of much active investigation in recent years in theory, experiments and simulations. With a rapid quench from the isotropic to nematic phase a large number of…
Collective dynamics in proliferating anisotropic particle systems arise from an interplay between growth, division, and mechanical interactions, often mediated by particle shape. In classical models of prolate, rod-like growth, flow-induced…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
We study stability and distortions of liquid crystal nematic order in a cell with a random heterogeneous substrate. Modeling this system as a bulk xy model with quenched disorder confined to a surface, we find that nematic order is…
We studied equilibrium systems composed of wedge-shaped monodisperse molecules using hard-particle Monte Carlo simulations. Each model molecule was made up of six colinear tangent spheres with linearly decreasing diameters. Thus, the shape…
Within the framework of continuum theory, we draw a parallel between ferromagnetic materials and nematic liquid crystals confined on curved surfaces, which are both characterized by local interaction and anchoring potentials. We show that…
Handedness of the director twist in cholesteric liquid crystals is commonly assumed to be the same throughout the medium, determined solely by the chirality of constituent molecules or chiral additives, albeit distortions of the…
Nematic colloids exhibit a large diversity of topological defects and structures induced by colloidal particles in the orientationally ordered liquid crystal host fluids. These defects and field configurations define elastic interactions…
Biaxial nematic ($N_B$) liquid crystals have been indicated as promising candidates for the design of next-generation displays with novel electro-optical properties and faster switching times. While at the molecular scale their existence is…