Related papers: Nematic liquid crystals at rough and fluctuating i…
Density functional theory is used to study colloidal hard-rod fluids near an individual right-angled wedge or edge as well as near a hard wall which is periodically patterned with rectangular barriers. The Zwanzig model, in which the…
Liquid crystalline media mediate interactions between suspended particles and confining geometries, which not only has potential to guide patterning and bottom-up colloidal assembly, but can also control colloidal migration in microfluidic…
We observe a sequence of the anchoring transitions in nematic liquid crystals (NLC) sandwiched between the hydrophobic polyimide substrates treated with the plasma beam. There is a pronounced continuous transition from homeotropic to low…
A body immersed in a nematic liquid crystal disturbs the fluid's preferred molecular configuration and increases its stored elastic energy. In an active nematic, the fluid components also generate a stress in the bulk fluid. By introducing…
We present an isothermal fluctuating nonlinear hydrodynamic theory of crystallization in molecular liquids. A dynamic coarse-graining technique is used to derive the velocity field, a phenomenology, which allows a direct coupling between…
A theoretical investigation of weak-anchoring effects in a thin two-dimensional pinned static ridge of nematic liquid crystal resting on a flat solid substrate in an atmosphere of passive gas is performed. Specifically, we solve a reduced…
The Landau-de Gennes free energy is used to study theoretically the effective interaction of a spherical "key" and an anisotropic "lock" colloidal particles. We assume identical anchoring properties of the surfaces of the key and of the…
We examine the equilibrium configurations of a nematic liquid crystal with an immersed body in two-dimensions. A complex variables formulation provides a means for finding analytical solutions in the case of strong anchoring. Local…
We analyse the homogeneous instabilities in a nematic liquid crystal subjected to plane steady Couette or Poiseuille flow in the case when the director is pre-aligned perpendicular to the flow plane taking into account weak anchoring at the…
We study in detail the influence of molecular interactions on the Frank elastic constants of uniaxial nematic liquid crystals composed of molecules of cylindrical symmetry. A brief summary of the status of theoretical development for the…
We report on the alignment transition of a nematic liquid crystal from initially homeotropic to quasi-planar due to field-induced anchoring breaking. The initial homeotropic alignment is achieved by Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers. In this…
We study the effects of elastic anisotropy on the Landau-de Gennes critical points for nematic liquid crystals, in a square domain. The elastic anisotropy is captured by a parameter, $L_2$, and the critical points are described by three…
A singular potential method in the Q tensor order parameter representation of a nematic liquid crystal is used to study the equilibrium configuration of a disclination dipole. Unlike the well studied isotropic limit (the so called one…
A surface in contact with the isotropic phase of a passive liquid crystal can induce nematic order over distances that range from microscopic to macroscopic when the nematic-isotropic interface undergoes an orientational-wetting transition.…
We investigate theoretically the wetting properties of cholesteric liquid crystals at a planar substrate. If the properties of substrate and of the interface are such that the cholesteric layers are not distorted the wetting properties are…
We examine fluctuation-induced (pseudo-Casimir) interactions in nematic liquid-crystalline films confined between two surfaces, where one of the surfaces imposes a strong homeotropic anchoring (ensuring a uniform mean director profile),…
The surface free energy, or surface tension, of a liquid interface gives rise to a pressure jump when the interface is curved. Here we show that a similar capillary pressure arises at the interface of soft solids. We present experimental…
Here we study theoretically the dynamics of a 2D and a 3D isotropic droplet in a nematic liquid crystal under a shear flow. We find a large repertoire of possible nonequilibrium steady states as a function of the shear rate and of the…
We derive the hydrodynamic equations for nematic liquid crystals lying on curved substrates. We invoke the Lagrange-Rayleigh variational principle to adapt the Ericksen-Leslie theory to two-dimensional nematics in which a degenerate…
Strong anchoring boundary conditions are conventionally modelled by imposing Dirichlet conditions on the order parameter in Landau-de Gennes theory, neglecting the finite surface energy of realistic anchoring. This work revisits the strong…