Related papers: Cholesteric Phase in Virus Suspensions
Cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) have a characteristic length scale given by the pitch of the twisted stacking of their constituent rod-like molecules. Under homeotropic anchoring conditions where the molecules prefer to orient…
We present a comprehensive rheological study of a suspension of thermosensitive particles dispersed in water. The volume fraction of these particles can be adjusted by the temperature of the system in a continuous fashion. Due to the finite…
The application of a sufficiently strong strain perpendicular to the pitch axis of a monodomain cholesteric elastomer unwinds the cholesteric helix. Previous theoretical analyses of this transition ignored the effects of Frank elasticity…
We consider director configurations of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) cells with two plane confining substrates. Exact solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations for out-of-plane orientations of the easy axes that correspond to…
We construct colloidal ``sticky'' rods from the semi-flexible filamentous fd virus and temperature-sensitive polymers poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM). The phase diagram of fd-PNIPAM system becomes independent of ionic strength at high…
The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may…
We construct phase diagrams for charged rodlike colloids within the second-virial approximation as a function of rod concentration, salt concentration, and colloidal charge. Besides the expected isotropic-nematic transition, we also find…
Building a general theoretical framework to describe the microscopic origin of macroscopic chirality in (colloidal) liquid crystals is a long-standing challenge. Here, we combine classical density functional theory with Monte Carlo…
We measure the self-diffusion of colloidal rod-like virus {\it fd} in an isotropic and nematic phase. A low volume fraction of viruses are labelled with a fluorescent dye and dissolved in a background of unlabelled rods. The trajectories of…
Addition of particles to a viscoelastic suspension dramatically alters the properties of the mixture, particularly when it is sheared or otherwise processed. Shear-induced stretching of the polymers results in elastic stress that causes a…
In a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal, the electrostatic interaction can induce a spontaneous cholesteric helix, even if the material is not chiral. If the liquid-crystal cell is infinitely thick, then the predicted pitch depends…
Recent numerical simulations of hard helical particle systems unveiled the existence of a novel chiral nematic phase, termed screw-like, characterised by the helical organization of the particle C$_2$ symmetry axes round the nematic…
The extended Frank elastic energy density is used to investigate the existence of a stable periodically modulate structure that appears as a ground state exhibiting a twist-bend molecular arrangement. For an unbounded sample, we show that…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of chirality and biaxiality in liquid crystals through a variety of theoretical approaches, including Monte Carlo simulations, lattice mean-field theory, and Landau theory. All of these calculations…
We study suspensions of semi-flexible colloidal rods and biopolymers using an Onsager-type second-virial functional for a segmented-chain model. For suspensions of thin and thick fd virus particles we calculate phase diagrams in…
Filamentous bacteriophages fd are viral particles, highly monodisperse in size, that have been widely used as a model colloidal system for studying the self-assembly of rod-shaped particles as well as a versatile template in nanoscience. In…
The orientational distribution function of the nematic phase of the semi-flexible rod-like virus fd is measured by x-ray diffraction as a function of concentration and ionic strength. The angular distribution of the scattered intensity from…
We study the uniaxial compressive behavior of disordered colloidal free-standing micropillars composed of a bidisperse mixture of 3 and 6 um polystyrene particles. Mechanical annealing of confined pillars enables variation of the packing…
We present an investigation of the phase diagram of cholesteric liquid crystals within the framework of Landau - de Gennes theory. The free energy is modified to incorporate all three Frank elastic constants and to allow for a temperature…
The onset of thermal convection in a horizontal layer of a colloidal suspension is investigated in terms of a continuum model for binary-fluid mixtures where the viscosity depends on the local concentration of colloidal particles. With an…