Related papers: Smectic Liquid Crystals: Materials with One-Dimens…
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…
Due to the intertwining between electronic nematic and elastic degrees of freedom, lattice defects and structural inhomogeneities commonly found in crystals can have a significant impact on the electronic properties of nematic materials.…
We demonstrate a variety of ordered patterns, including hexagonal structures and chains, formed by colloidal particles (droplets) at the free surface of a nematic liquid crystal (LC). The surface placement introduces a new type of particle…
Experimental and modeling/simulation studies of phase equilibrium and growth morphologies of novel polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) mixtures of PS (polystyrene) and liquid crystals that exhibit a direct isotropic/smectic-A (lamellar)…
The selection of stacking order in a broad range of close-packed polymorphic materials remains a challenging enigma. Using in situ cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, we uncover the atomistic mechanisms governing the vapour…
Liquid crystals in two dimensions undergo a first-order isotropic-to-quasi-nematic transition, provided the particle interactions are sufficiently ``sharp and narrow''. This implies phase coexistence between isotropic and quasi-nematic…
It is typical in smectic liquid crystals to describe elastic deformations with a linear theory when the elastic strain is small. We extend the recent, exact solution of Brener and Marchenko to more general one-dimensional deformations,…
There are three kinds of solid states of matter that can exist in physical space: quasicrystalline (quasiperiodic), crystalline (periodic) and amorphous (aperiodic). Herein, we consider the degree of orientational order that develops upon…
The liquid crystalline compound, forming the glass of the smectic C$_A$* phase, is investigated by the X-ray diffraction in the 18-298 K range. The characteristic distances within the smectic C$_A$* phase are determined. The electron…
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft phase-changing solids that exhibit large reversible contractions upon heating, Goldstone-like soft modes and resultant microstructural instabilities. We heat a planar LCE slab to isotropic, clamp…
Defects are a ubiquitous feature of ordered media. They have certain universal features, independent of the underlying physical system, reflecting their topological origins. While the topological properties of defects are robust, they…
We consider textures of biaxial nematics confined between two parallel plates. The boundary conformations at the bordering plates are supposed to be identical, the gradients of the order parameter being generally nonzero. We claim that for…
We develop a theory of point defects in cholesterics and textures in spherical droplets with normal anchoring. The local structure of chiral defects is described by singularity theory and a smectic-like gradient field establishing a nexus…
Recent experiments and simulations have demonstrated that particle-covered interfaces can exist in stable non-spherical shapes as a result of the steric jamming of the interfacially trapped particles, which confers the interface with…
Topological defects are one of the most conspicuous features of liquid crystals. In two dimensional nematics, they have been shown to behave effectively as particles with both, charge and orientation, which dictate their interactions. Here,…
Colloidal particles at complex fluid interfaces and within films assemble to form ordered structures with high degrees of symmetry via interactions that include capillarity, elasticity, and other fields like electrostatic charge. Here we…
We report on a new experimental procedure for forming and studying polar smectic liquid crystal films. A free standing smectic film is put in contact with a liquid drop, so that the film has one liquid crystal/liquid interface and one…
Freely suspended films of smectic liquid crystals are unique examples of quasi two-dimensional fluids. Mechanically stable and with quantized thickness of the order of only a few molecular layers, smectic films are ideal systems for…
Liquid crystals (LCs) form an extremely rich range of self-assembled topological structures with artificially or naturally created topological defects. Some of the main applications of LCs are various optical and photonic devices, where…
Confined smectic A liquid crystals (SmA LCs) form topological defects called focal conic domains (FCDs) that focus light as gradient-index lenses. Here, we exploit surface curvature to self-assemble FCDs in a single step into a hierarchical…