Related papers: Ordered droplet structures at the liquid crystal s…
Hypothesis: The collective dynamics and self-assembly of colloids floating at a fluid/fluid interface is a balance between deterministic lateral interaction forces, viscous resistance to colloid motion along the surface and thermal…
In an earlier report we explored structural correlations at a liquid-solid interface with molecular dynamics simulations of a model aluminium system using the Ercolessi-Adams potential and up to 4320 atoms. Substrate atoms were pinned to…
This article investigates the interaction of nematic liquid crystals modeled by a simplified Ericksen-Leslie model with a rigid body. It is shown that this problem is locally strongly well-posed, and that it also admits a unique, global…
So-called polar liquid crystals possess spontaneous long-range mutual orientation of their electric dipole moments, conferring bulk polarity to fluid phases of matter. The combination of polarity and fluidity leads to complex phase…
The paper is concerned with various issues surrounding the mathematical description of defects in models of liquid crystals, drawing on experience from solid mechanics. The roles played by a suitable choice of function space and by the…
Active particles under soft confinement such as droplets or vesicles present intriguing phenomena, as collective motion emerges alongside the deformation of the environment. A model is employed to systematically investigate droplet…
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,…
We introduce a novel type of self-bound droplet which carries an emergent color charge. We consider a system of particles hopping on a lattice and interacting via a commensurately sign-changing potential which is attractive at a short…
Colloidal assembly at fluid interfaces has a great potential for the bottom-up fabrication of novel structured materials. However, challenges remain in realizing controllable and tunable assembly of particles into diverse structures.…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
A theoretical analysis of homeotropic alignment induced by nanoparticles (NPs) in a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) sample cell is presented. It is found that such alignment on the surface of a NP causes a change in the orientation of the…
Placing colloidal particles in predesigned sites represents a major challenge of the current state-of-the-art colloidal science. Nematic liquid crystals with spatially varying director patterns represent a promising approach to achieve a…
Stripe-like and bubble-like patterns spontaneously form in numerous physical, chemical, and biological systems when competing long-range and short-range interactions banish uniformity. Stripe-like and the related nematic morphology are also…
Competing interactions stabilize exotic mesoscopic structures, yet the microscopic mechanisms by which they influence non-equilibrium processes leading to disordered states remain largely unexplored, despite their critical role in…
A rigid object moving in a viscous fluid and in close proximity with an elastic wall experiences self-generated elastohydrodynamic interactions. This has been the subject of an intense research activity, with a recent and growing attention…
Using nCB films adsorbed on MoS 2 substrates studied by x-ray diffraction, optical microscopy and Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, we demonstrate that ordered interfaces with well-defined orientations of adsorbed dipoles induce planar…
Particles with directional interactions are promising building blocks for new functional materials and may serve as models for biological structures. Mutually attractive nanoparticles that are deformable due to flexible surface groups, for…
Patchy colloidal platelets with convex, non-spherical shapes have been realized with different materials at length scales ranging from nanometers to microns. While the assembly of these hard shapes tends to maximize edge-to-edge contacts,…
Nematic liquid crystals confined to geometrically as well as chemically patterned substrate on one end and a flat substrate with strong anchoring on the other is studied using non-Boltzmann Monte Carlo methods. We observe significant…
We investigate the self-organization of point-particles with short-range interactions modeled via simple 1D and 2D Hubbard-like models. We show how various properties emerge such as, boson-like ordering leading to topological structures in…