Related papers: Phase chirality and stereo-selective swelling of c…
We numerically investigate the phase behavior of thick shells of cholesteric liquid crystals with tangential anchoring at the shell boundary. For achiral liquid crystal, we demonstrate a thickness-dependent transition from a configuration…
We study the phase behaviour of cholesteric liquid crystal shells with different geometries. We compare the cases of tangential and no anchoring at the surface, focussing on the former case, which leads to a competition between the…
We study the role of the control parameter triggering nematic order (temperature or concentration) on the dynamical behavior of a system of nanorods under shear. Our study is based on a set of mesoscopic equations of motion for the…
We consider the interaction potential between two chiral rod-like colloids which consist of a thin cylindrical backbone decorated with a helical charge distribution on the cylinder surface. For sufficiently slender coiled rods a simple…
Chirality, ubiquitous in complex biological systems, can be controlled and quantified in synthetic materials such as cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) systems. In this work, we study spherical shells of CLC under weak anchoring conditions.…
The fundamental issues of symmetry related to chirality are discussed and applied to simple situations relevant to liquid crystals. We show that any chiral measure of a geometric object is a pseudoscalar (invariant under proper rotations…
In the mimetic membrane system of phosphatidylcholine bilayers, thickening (pre-critical behavior, anomalous swelling) of the bilayers is observed, in the vicinity of the main transition, which is non-linear with temperature. The sterols…
We report a computer simulation study on the effect of molecular structural biaxiality in the phase formation of chiral molecules. In this study, we have done coarse-grained modeling to observe self-assembled phase behavior. In our…
We use full nematohydrodynamic simulations to study the statics and dynamics of monolayers of cholesteric liquid crystals. Using chirality and temperature as control parameters we show that we can recover the two-dimensional blue phases…
We consider theoretically the properties of piezoelectricity in cholesteric elastomers. We deduce using symmetry considerations the piezoelectric contributions to the free energy in the context of a coarse-grained description of the…
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…
The hydrodynamic stresses created by active particles can destabilise orientational order present in the system. This is manifested, for example, by the appearance of a bend instability in active nematics or in quasi-2-dimensional living…
Chirality is ubiquitous in nature and plays crucial roles in biology, medicine, physics and materials science. Understanding and controlling chirality is therefore an important research challenge with broad implications in fundamental and…
A mechanical strain field applied to a monodomain cholesteric elastomer will unwind the helical director distribution. There is an analogy with the classical problem of an electric field applied to a cholesteric liquid crystal, but with…
Ferroelectric nematic phases are a new class of polar fluids in which spontaneous polarization is directly coupled to the orientational order, providing unique opportunities for creating self-organized materils with spatially modulated…
The dynamics of a quasi two-dimensional isotropic droplet in a cholesteric liquid crystal medium under symmetric shear flow is studied by lattice Boltzmann simulations. We consider a geometry in which the flow direction is along the axis of…
We present a detailed analysis of the molecular packing of a strained liquid crystal elastomer composed of chiral mesogens in the smectic A phase. X-ray diffraction patterns of the elastomer collected over a range of orientations with…
We present a theoretical study of director fields in toroidal geometries with degenerate planar boundary conditions. We find spontaneous chirality: despite the achiral nature of nematics the director configuration show a handedness if the…
This study explores the mechanisms behind the helical structures in cholesteric liquid crystalline (CLC) phases using molecular dynamics simulations. By adding chiral agents to the nematic liquid crystalline (NLC) compound, 5CB, the…
This paper reviews the complex ordered structures induced by chirality in liquid crystals. In general, chirality favors a twist in the orientation of liquid-crystal molecules. In some cases, as in the cholesteric phase, this favored twist…