Related papers: Self-assembly in Lyotropic Chromonic Liquid Crysta…

Recent progress in colloidal science has led to elaborate self-assembled structures whose complexity raises hopes for elaborating new materials. However, the throughputs are extremely low and consequently, the chance to produce materials of…

Active colloids belong to a class of non-equilibrium systems where energy uptake, conversion and dissipation occurs at the level of individual colloidal particles, which can lead to particles self-propelled motion and surprising collective…

Motivated by the idea that intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) condense into liquid-like droplets within cells, we carry out Monte Carlo simulations of a polymer lattice model to study the relationship between charge patterning and…

Metastable structures in macromolecular and colloidal systems are non-equilibrium states that often have long lifetimes and cause difficulties in simulating equilibrium. In order to escape from the long-lived metastable states, we propose a…

Self-learning hybrid Monte Carlo (SLHMC) is a first-principles simulation that allows for exact ensemble generation on potential energy surfaces based on density functional theory. The statistical sampling can be accelerated with the…

Motivated by the need for new materials and green energy production and conversion processes, a class of mathematical models for liquid crystal elastomers integrated within a theoretical charge pump electrical circuit is considered. The…

Computationally, low-resolution coarse-grained models provide the most viable means for simulating the large length and time scales associated with mesoscopic phenomena. Moreover, since lyotropic phases in solution may contain high solvent…

Semiflexible polymers in concentrated lyotropic solution are studied within a bead-spring model by molecular dynamics simulations, focusing on the emergence of a smectic A phase and its properties. We systematically vary the density of the…

We study how dispersions of colloidal particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal behave under a time-dependent electric field. By controlling the amplitude and shape of the applied field wave, we show that the system can be reproducibly…

We report a molecular dynamics simulation demonstrating that the Smectic B crystalline phase (Cr-B), commonly observed in mesogenic systems of anisotropic molecules, can be formed by a system of identical particles interacting via a…

Colloidal particles dispersed in liquid crystals can form new materials with tunable elastic and electro-optic properties. In a periodic `blue phase' host, particles should template into colloidal crystals with potential uses in photonics,…

Natural bacterial habitats are often complex fluids with viscoelastic and anisotropic responses to stress; for example, they can take the form of liquid crystals (LCs), with elongated microscopic constituents that collectively align while…

Active colloids self-organise to a variety of collective states, ranging from highly motile 'molecules' to complex 3D structures. Using large-scale simulations, we show that hydrodynamic interactions, together with a gravity-like aligning…

Mesogens, which are typically stiff rodlike or disklike molecules, are able to self-organize into liquid crystal (LC) phases in a certain temperature range. Such mesogens, or LC groups, can be attached to polymer chains in various…

Soft particles are known to overlap and form stable clusters that self-assemble into periodic crystalline phases with density-independent lattice constants. We use molecular dynamics simulations in two dimensions to demonstrate that,…

Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) are anisotropic mesogenic molecules which carry charges and therefore combine properties of liquid crystals, e.g., the formation of mesophases, and of ionic liquids, such as low melting temperatures and tiny…

Self-assembly is traditionally described as the process through which an initially disordered system relaxes towards an equilibrium ordered phase only driven by local interactions between its building blocks. However, This definition is too…

Self-diffusiophoretic particles exploit local concentration gradients of a solute species in order to self-propel at the micron scale. While an isolated chemically- and geometrically-isotropic particle cannot swim, we show that it can…

When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…

Fluids with competing short range attraction and long range repulsive interactions between the particles can exhibit a variety of microphase separated structures. We develop a lattice-gas (generalised Ising) model and analyse the phase…