Related papers: Spontaneous phase separation and pattern formation…
We explore reshaping of nematoelastic films upon imbibing an isotropic solvent under conditions when isotropic and nematic phases coexist. The structure of the interphase boundary is computed taken into account the optimal nematic…
A Self Consistent Field Theory description of equilibrium, but non uniform, configurations adopted by semi flexible liquid crystal molecules is presented. Two cases are considered, isotropic-nematic phase boundaries, and topological defects…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
Demixing of multicomponent biomolecular systems via liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) has emerged as a potentially unifying mechanism governing the formation of several membrane-less intracellular organelles ("condensates"), both in the…
In this work, we study the nematic-isotropic phase transition based on the dynamics of the Landau--De Gennes theory of liquid crystals. At the critical temperature, the Landau--De Gennes bulk potential favors the isotropic phase and nematic…
We report a high-resolution x-ray scattering study of the smectic liquid crystal octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) confined to aligned colloidal aerosil gels. The aligned gels introduce orientational fields that promote long-range nematic order…
We investigate isotropic-isotropic, isotropic-nematic and nematic-nematic phase coexistence in binary mixtures of circular platelets with vanishing thickness, continuous rotational degrees of freedom and radial size ratios $\lambda$ up to…
Electronic-liquid-crystal phases, in which part of the spatial symmetries are broken spontaneously, are considered to play a vital role in interpreting the structure-property relation in strongly-correlated materials. Although…
We present experiments where anisometric colloidal microparticles dispersed in a nematic liquid crystal cell with homeotropic anchoring conditions are dynamically assembled by means of liquid-crystal-enabled electrophoresis (LCEEP) using an…
We propose lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) as a distinct class of materials for organic electronics. In water, the chromonic molecules stack on top of each other into elongated aggregates that form orientationally ordered…
Water is an unique material with a long list of thermodynamic, dynamic and structural anomalies, which are usually attributed to the competition between two characteristic length scales in the intermolecular interaction. It has been argued…
This article analyzes modulated phases in liquid crystals, from the long-established cholesteric and blue phases to the recently discovered twist-bend, splay-bend, and splay nematic phases, as well as the twist-grain-boundary (TGB) and…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…
Liquid droplets on soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, can induce substantial surface deformations, leading to the formation of wetting ridges at contact points. While these contact ridges have been shown to govern the rich surface…
Mono-layers of stearic and behenic acids and mixtures of them in different proportions, deposited with the Langmuir-Blodgett technique, were used to study the alignment and the alignment dynamics in nematic liquid crystal cells. A…
We report the elaboration of a hybrid mesophase combining the lamellar order of a lyotropic system of nonionic surfactant and the nematic order of a concentrated solution of inorganic nanorods confined between the surfactant layers. Highly…
Liquid crystals have attracted enormous interest because of the variety of their phases and richness of their application. The interplay of general physical symmetries and specific molecular features generates a myriad of different…
We study numerically the behaviour of a mixture of a passive isotropic fluid and an active polar gel, in the presence of a surfactant favouring emulsification. Focussing on parameters for which the underlying free energy favours the…
We show that "dry" active nematics, e.g. collections of shaken elongated granular particles, exhibit large-scale spatiotemporal chaos made of interacting dense, ordered, band-like structures in a parameter region including the linear onset…
Discotic ionic liquid crystals (DILCs) consist of self-assembled superdiscs of cations and anions that spontaneously stack in linear columns with high one-dimensional ionic and electronic charge mobility, making them prominent model systems…