相关论文: Disclination-mediated thermo-optical response in n…

Disclinations lines play a key role in many physical processes, from the fracture of materials to the formation of the early universe. Achieving versatile control over disclinations is key to developing novel electro-optical devices,…

Much recent progress has been made in the study of nematic solids, both glassy and elastomeric, particularly in the realm of stress-free, defect-driven deformation in thin sheets of material. In this paper we consider a subset of texture…

Nematic elastomers and glasses deform spontaneously when subjected to temperature changes. This property can be exploited in the design of heterogeneously patterned thin sheets that deform into a non-trivial shape when heated or cooled. In…

Linear defects such as dislocations and disclinations in ordered materials attract foreign particles since they replace strong elastic distortions at the defect cores. In this work, we explore the behavior of isotropic droplets nucleating…

Topological defects, such as disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals, are fundamental to many physical systems and applications. In this work, we study the behavior of nematic disclinations in thin parallel-plate geometries with…

A continuum mechanical framework is developed for determining a) the class of stress-free deformed shapes and corresponding director distributions on the undeformed configuration of a nematic glass membrane that has a prescribed spontaneous…

Thanks to their unique properties, nematic liquid crystals feature a variety of mechanisms for light-matter interactions. For continuous-wave optical excitations, the two dominant contributions stem from reorientational and thermal…

We investigate theoretically the morphology of a thin nematic film adsorbed at flat substrate patterned by stripes with alternating aligning properties, normal and tangential respectively. We construct a simple "exactly-solvable" effective…

The equilibrium texture of nematic shells is studied as a function of their thickness. For ultrathin shells the ground state has four short 1/2 disclination lines but, as the thickness of the film increases, a three dimensional escaped…

We solve the forward and inverse problems associated with the transformation of flat sheets to surfaces of revolution with non-trivial topography, including Gaussian curvature, without a stretch elastic cost. We deal with systems slender…

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the study of shape formation using modern responsive materials that can be preprogrammed to undergo spatially inhomogeneous local deformations. In particular, nematic liquid crystalline…

We study theoretically the non-linear response properties of glass formers. We establish several general results which, together with the assumption of Time-Temperature Superposition, lead to a relation between the non-linear response and…

We have studied the nucleation and the physical properties of a -1/2 wedge disclination line near the free surface of a confined nematic liquid crystal. The position of the disclination line has been related to the material parameters…

In search for novel nematic materials, a laterally linked H-shaped liquid crystal dimer have been synthesized and characterized. The distinct feature of the material is a very broad temperature range (about 50 oC) of the nematic phase,…

Colloids dispersed in nematic liquid crystals form topological composites in which colloid-associated defects mediate interactions while adhering to fundamental topological constraints. Better realising the promise of such materials…

Very thin elastic sheets, even at zero temperature, exhibit nonlinear elastic response by virtue of their dominant bending modes. Their behavior is even richer at finite temperature. Here we use molecular dynamics (MD) to study the…

Motivated by problems arising in tear film dynamics, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to its response. We rescale…

We introduce a new class of non-isothermal models describing the evolution of nematic liquid crystals and prove their consistency with the fundamental laws of classical Thermodynamics. The resulting system of equations captures all…

Nematic elastomers are programmable soft materials that display large, reversible and predictable deformation under an external stimulus such as a change in temperature or light. While much of the work in the field has focused on actuation…

A spontaneous buckling transition in thin layers of monodomain nematic liquid crystalline gel was observed by polarized light microscopy. The coupling between the orientational ordering of liquid crystalline solvent and the translational…