Related papers: Surface extrapolation length and director structur…
Liquid crystals establish a nearly unique combination of thermodynamic, hydrodynamic, and topological behavior. This poses a challenge to their theoretical understanding and modeling. The arena where these effects come together is the…
A model describing the evolution of a liquid crystal substance in the nematic phase is investigated in terms of three basic state variables: the {\it absolute temperature} $\teta$, the {\it velocity field} $\ub$, and the {\it director…
The temperature behaviour of the anchoring energy of nematic liquid crystal MBBA at the substrates with oblique SiO evaporation and director orientation at the interface have been studied by means of magnetic Freedericksz transition…
An elastic membrane with embedded nematic molecules is considered as a model of anisotropic fluid membrane with internal ordering. By considering the geometric coupling between director field and membrane curvature, the nematic texture is…
Using Monte Carlo simulations of the Lebwohl--Lasher model we study the director ordering in a nematic cell where the top and bottom surfaces are patterned with a lattice of $\pm 1$ point topological defects of lattice spacing $a$. We find…
Nonlinear elastic theory studies the elastic constants of a material (such as Young's modulus or bulk modulus) as a power series in the applied load. The inverse bulk modulus K, for example depends on the compression P: $ {1/ K(P)} = c_0 +…
We analyse the effect of thermal fluctuations on the elastic constants of the decoupled lamellar phase of tethered, crystalline membranes. Using a momentum-shell renormalization group technique, we show that the smectic-A -like…
Despite their astrophysical relevance, nuclear pasta phases are relatively unstudied at high temperatures. We present molecular dynamics simulations of symmetric nuclear matter with several topologies of `lasagna' at a range of temperatures…
We report a detailed simulation and classical density functional theory study of the drying transition in a realistic model fluid at a smooth substrate. This transition (in which the contact angle $\theta\to 180^\circ$) is shown to be…
A system of soft ellipsoid molecules confined between two planar walls is studied using classical Density Functional Theory (DFT). Both the isotropic and nematic phases are considered. The excess free energy is evaluated using two different…
We introduce a simple mean-field lattice model to describe the behavior of nematic elastomers. This model combines the Maier-Saupe-Zwanzig approach to liquid crystals and an extension to lattice systems of the Warner-Terentjev theory of…
The sliding columnar phase is a new liquid-crystalline phase of matter composed of two-dimensional smectic lattices stacked one on top of the other. This phase is characterized by strong orientational but weak positional correlations…
We develop a nonlinear model for electroosmotic transport in a constricted microchannel with a compliant lower wall, with applications to soft microfluidics, bio-inspired sensing, and energy harvesting. The formulation couples…
Hypothesis:Diffusion in confinement is an important fundamental problem with significant implications for applications of supported liquid phases. However, resolving the spatially dependent diffusion coefficient, parallel and perpendicular…
By Monte Carlo simulations of a soft ellipsoid model for liquid crystals, we study whether a layer of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules can induce tilt in a nematic fluid. The chains are fairly short (four monomers) and made of the…
A nematic liquid crystal (NLC) layer with the anisotropy axis modulated at a fixed rate q in the transverse direction is considered. If the layer locally constitutes a half-wave plate, then the thin-screen approximation predicts 100%…
We have used kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) simulations of a lattice gas to study front fluctuations in the spreading of a non-volatile liquid droplet onto a solid substrate. Our results are consistent with a diffusive growth law for the radius…
Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations were used to study pool boiling of water films on an ultra-thin planar aluminum substrate as well as the effect of surface wettability. The simulation geometry is a 10 nm-thick water…
A kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) method is used to study the structural properties and dynamics of a supercooled binary Lennard-Jones liquid around the glass transition temperature. This technique permits us to explore the potential energy…
We present a large-scale molecular dynamics study of nematic-paranematic interfaces under shear. We use a model of soft repulsive ellipsoidal particles with well-known equilibrium properties, and consider interfaces which are oriented…