Related papers: Phase Transitions in Lyotropic Nematic Gels
McMillan liquid crystal model sandwiched between strong homeotropic anchoring walls is studied. Phase transitions between isotropic, nematic, and smectic A phases are investigated for wide ranges of an interaction parameter and of the…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
We study the crossover between liquid and solid electron phases in a two-dimensional harmonic trap as the density is progressively diluted. We infer the formation of geometrically ordered phases from charge distributions and pair…
In this paper, we use the cell dynamics method to study the dynamics of phase transformation when three phases exist. The system we study is a two-dimensional system. The system is able to achieve three phases coexistence, which for…
Orientational dynamics in the isotropic phase of a comb-shaped nematic polymer with mesogenic and functional side groups was studied using the Kerr effect and dielectric spectroscopy. For the first time, it was found that in a mesogenic…
In soft matter, the phase of nematic liquid crystals can be made from anisotropic molecules in single component materials, or as a suspension of mesoscopic nematogens. The later offers more versatility in the experimental design of complex…
Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…
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,…
The liquid-gas phase transition is studied in a multi-component nuclear system using a local Skyrme interaction with Coulomb and surface effects. Some features are qualitatively the same as the results of Muller and Serot which uses…
A lyotropic ferrocolloid is synthesized by mixing of a cationic ferrofluid and potassium laurate/1-decanol/water ternary solution. Conditions of existence of a nematic phase in this mixture, other mesophases, and their phase diagrams in the…
The sol-gel transition is studied in two purely entropic models consisting of hard spheres in continuous three-dimensional space, with a fraction $p$ of nearest neighbor spheres tethered by inextensible bonds. When all the tethers are…
The elastic interactions between objects embedded in a nematic liquid crystal are usually caused by the average distorsion-rather than by the fluctuations-of the nematic orientational field. We argue that for sufficiently small particles,…
We point out that the smectic-nematic phase transition may considered as a transition of a stack of membranes in $2+\epsilon$ dimensions, in which the layers become so wrinkled that they interpenetrate each other are no longer…
Gels are low-packing arrested states of matter which are able to support stress. On cooling, limited valence colloidal particles form open networks stabilized by the progressive increase of the interparticle bond lifetime. These gels, named…
By analyzing elastic theory for nematic liquid crystals, we distinguish three regimes of elastic constants. In one regime, the Ericksen inequalities are satisfied, and the ground state of the director field is uniform. In a second regime,…
In culture migrating and interacting amoeboid cells can form nematic liquid crystal phases. A polar nematic liquid crystal is formed if the interaction has a polar symmetry. One type of white blood cells (granulocytes) form clusters where…
We have employed the Density Functional Theory formalism to investigate the nematic-isotropic capillary transitions of a nematogen confined by walls that favor antagonist orientations to the liquid crystal molecules (hybrid cell). We…
Experiments and theory have shown that cell monolayers and epithelial tissues exhibit solid-liquid and glass-liquid transitions. These transitions are biologically relevant to our understanding of embryonic development, wound healing, and…
Continuum models of active nematic gels have proved successful to describe a number of biological systems consisting of a population of rodlike motile subunits in a fluid environment. However, in order to get a thorough understanding of the…
A propagating "beam" triggering a local phase transition in a nematic elastomer sets it into a crawling motion, which may morph due to buckling. We consider the motion of the various configurations of slender rods and thin stripes with both…