Related papers: Topological Defects and Interactions in Nematic Em…
Active forces occurring within cells can drive crucial biological processes that involve spontaneous organization and shape change, such as cell division. Motivated by recent in vitro experiments of nematic droplets of cytoskeletal…
Cultured stem cells have become a standard platform not only for regenerative medicine and developmental biology but also for biophysical studies. Yet, the characterization of cultured stem cells at the level of morphology and macroscopic…
The rheology of pressure-driven flows of two-dimensional dense monodisperse emulsions in neutral wetting microchannels is investigated by means of mesoscopic lattice simulations, capable of handling large collections of droplets, in the…
The spontaneous emergence of collective flows is a generic property of active fluids and often leads to chaotic flow patterns characterised by swirls, jets, and topological disclinations in their orientation field. However, the ability to…
Microfluidic devices can be used to produce highly controlled and monodisperse double or multiple emulsions. The presence of inner drops inside a jet of the middle phase introduces deformations in the jet, which leads to breakup into…
Microscopy observations show that suspensions of synthetic and natural nano-layered smectite clay particles submitted to a strong external electric field undergo a fast and extended structuring. This structuring results from the interaction…
When fragile molecules such as glycine, polyglicine, alkanes, and alkanethiols are embedded in liquid helium nanodroplets, electron-impact ionization of the beam leads to fragmentation which is as extensive as that of isolated gas-phase…
Active droplets can swim spontaneously in viscous flows as a result of the non-linear convective transport of a chemical solute produced at their surface by the Marangoni and/or phoretic flows generated by this solute's inhomogeneous…
Optical modes of a multilayered photonic structure with the twisted nematic liquid crystal as a defect layer have been investigated. The electroconvective flow in the nematic makes a spatially periodic structure in the form of abnormal…
We present observations of strength one defects and antidefects formed in isotropic-nematic phase transition in a thin layer of nematic liquid crystals, using a cross-polarizer setup. We measure the widths of the distributions of {\it net}…
We present a hydrodynamic model for a thin spherical shell of active nematic liquid crystal with an arbitrary configuration of defects. The active flows generated by defects in the director lead to the formation of stable vortices,…
The role of boundary layers in conventional liquid crystals is commonly subsumed in their anchoring on confining walls. In the classical view, anchoring enslaves the orientational field of the passive material under equilibrium conditions.…
The interplay between the chirality of many biological molecules and the energy injected at small length-scales as the result of biological processes is at the base of the life of the cells. With the aim of unveiling the connection between…
A two-dimensional or quasi-two-dimensional nematic liquid crystal refers to a surface confined system. When such a system is further confined by external line boundaries or excluded from internal line boundaries, the nematic directors form…
We demonstrate scaffolding of plasmonic nanoparticles by topological defects induced by colloidal microspheres to match their surface boundary conditions with a uniform far-field alignment in a liquid crystal host. Displacing energetically…
Colloidal inclusions in nematic fluids induce topological defects that govern their dynamics. These defects create well-understood rheological behavior in passive nematics, but the interplay between colloid-associated defects and…
We find in a model system of thermotropic liquid crystals that the translational diffusion coefficient parallel to the director $D_{\parallel}$ first increases and then decreases as temperature drops through the nematic phase, and this…
In the field of microdroplet manipulation, optical tweezers have been used to form and grow droplets, to transport them, or to measure forces between droplet pairs. However, the exploration of out-of-equilibrium phenomena in optically…
Anisotropic fluids appear in a diverse array of systems, from liquid-crystal displays to bacterial swarms, and are characterized by orientational order. Large colloidal particles immersed in such environments disturb the medium's…
Active (i.e., self-propelled or swimming) particles moving through an isotropic fluid exhibit conventional diffusive behavior. We report anomalous diffusion of an active particle moving in an anisotropic, nematic background. Whilst the…