Related papers: On elliptical soft colloids in smectic-C films
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
We study the sedimentation of colloidal gels by using a combination of light scattering, polarimetry and video imaging. The asymptotic concentration profiles $\varphi(z,t\rightarrow \infty)$ exhibit remarkable scaling properties: profiles…
We study elasticity-driven morphological transitions of soft spherical core shell structures in which the core can be treated as an isotropic elastic continuum and the surface or shell as a tensionless liquid layer, whose elastic response…
A thin liquid film with non-zero curvature at its free surface spontaneously flows to reach a flat configuration, a process driven by Laplace pressure gradients and resisted by the liquid's viscosity. Inspired by recent progresses on the…
Particles added to a fluid interface can be used as a surface stabilizer in the food, oil and cosmetic industries. As an alternative to rigid particles, it is promising to consider highly deformable particles that can adapt their…
Charged colloidal crystals exhibit a subtle interplay between electrostatic screening and elastic deformation. In an anisotropic elastic medium the coupling between dilation and the local ionic environment becomes direction dependent,…
An isolated, initially cold and ellipsoidal cloud of self-gravitating particles represents a relatively simple system to study the effects of the deviations from spherical symmetry in the mechanism of violent relaxation. Initial deviations…
The electric field applied perpendicularly to smectic layers breaks the rotational symmetry of the system. Consequently, the elastic energy associated with distortions induced by an edge dislocation diverges logarithmically with the size of…
Mixing colloid shapes with distinctly different anisotropy generates composite nematics in which the order of the individual components can be fundamentally different. In colloidal rod-disk mixtures or hybrid nematics composed of…
We present a scaled particle density functional study of two-dimensional binary mixtures of hard convex particles with one or both species being ellipses. In particular, we divide our study into two parts. The first part is devoted to the…
Colloidal rods immersed in a thermotropic liquid-crystalline solvent are at the basis of so-called hybrid liquid crystals which are characterized by tunable nematic fluidity with symmetries ranging from conventional uniaxial nematic or…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Evaporative lithography in cells of arbitrary configuration allows for the creation of diverse particle deposition patterns due to the formation of a specific flow structure in the liquid caused by non-uniform evaporation. The latter in…
Using Monte Carlo simulation methods, we explore the role of molecular shape in the phase behavior of liquid crystals and the electroclinic effect. We study a "bent-rod" mesogen shaped like the letter Z, composed of seven soft spheres…
We report on and analyze the textural transformations in islands, thicker circular domains, floating in very thin free standing chiral Smectic C* liquid crystal films. As an island is growing, an initial pure bend texture of the c-director…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
Using laser tweezers and fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with strong tangential surface anchoring. The…
Bubbles made of smectic liquid crystals (LC) can display buckling and wrinkling. These deformations are induced in the course of the relaxation of an elongated bubble towards a sphere. The bubbles are created through the collapse of a…
A continuum dynamical model is developed to determine the morphological and compositional instabilities on the free surface of heteroepitaxial alloy films in the absence of growth. We use linear stability analysis to study the early…
Particle stabilized emulsions have received an enormous interest in the recent past, but our understanding of the dynamics of emulsion formation is still limited. For simple spherical particles, the time dependent growth of fluid domains is…