Related papers: Zig-zag instability of an Ising wall in liquid cry…
Substrates which are chemically or topographically patterned induce a variety of liquid crystal textures. The response of the liquid crystal to competing surface orientations, typical of patterned substrates, is determined by the anisotropy…
Motivated by recent experimental observations [U. Delabre et al, Langmuir 24, 3998, 2008] we reconsider an instability of ultrathin nematic films, spread on liquid substrates. Within a continuum elastic theory of liquid crystals, in the…
Nematic liquid crystals at rough and fluctuating interfaces are analyzed within the Frank elastic theory and the Landau-de Gennes theory. We study specifically interfaces that locally favor planar anchoring. In the first part we reconsider…
We present Monte Carlo simulation results of the two-dimensional Zwanzig fluid, which consists of hard line segments which may orient either horizontally or vertically. At a certain critical fugacity, we observe a phase transition with a…
We analyze a model problem based on highly disparate elastic constants that we propose in order to understand corners and cusps that form on the boundary between the nematic and isotropic phases in a liquid crystal. For a bounded planar…
We review and compare recent work on the properties of fluctuating interfaces between nematic and isotropic liquid-crystalline phases. Molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations have been carried out for systems of ellipsoids and hard…
We study the bendocapillary instability of a liquid droplet that part fills a flexible walled channel. Inspired by experiments in which a `weaving' pattern emerges as droplets of liquid are condensed slowly into deformable microchannels, we…
Instabilities of fluid-fluid interfaces are ubiquitous in passive soft matter. Adding activity to the interface or either fluid can dramatically change the stability of the interface. Using experiment and theory, we investigate the…
We investigate the nonlinear evolution of the Bales-Zangwill instability, responsible for the meandering of atomic steps on a growing vicinal surface. We develop an asymptotic method to derive, in the continuous limit, an evolution equation…
The complex physics of self-assembly in colloidal crystals on deformable interfaces and surfaces poses interesting possibilities for the designability and synthesis of next-generation metamaterials. The goal of this article is to…
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,…
Free interfaces of liquid crystals tend to minimise both capillarity and anchoring forces. Here we study nematic films in planar and radial geometries with antagonistic anchoring boundary conditions and one deformable interface. Assuming a…
This article models experimentally observed three dimensional particle-like waves that develop in nematic liquid crystals, with negative dielectric and conductive anisotropy, when subject to an applied alternating electric field. The liquid…
Paramagnetic colloidal particles that are optically trapped in a linear array can form a zigzag pattern when an external magnetic field induces repulsive interparticle interactions. When the traps are abruptly turned off, the particles form…
We investigate theoretically and experimentally the optical beam propagation in the nematic liquid crystal with negative dielectric anisotropy, which is aligned homeotropically in a $80\mu m$-thickness planar cell in the presence of an…
This study examines the stability of a flexible material interface between two fluids of the same viscosity in interaction with a free surface. When the layers are motionless, we provide evidence for the onset of a novel instability by…
Electro-hydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of…
We present the general theory of Ising transitions in isotropic elastic media with vanishing thermal expansion. By constructing a minimal model with appropriate spin-lattice couplings, we show that in two dimensions near a continuous…
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…
The effect of rough walls on the phase behaviour of a confined liquid crystal (LC) fluid is studied using constant pressure Monte Carlo simulations. The LC is modelled as a fluid of soft ellipsoidal molecules and the rough walls are…