相关论文: Ring around the colloid
Colloidal particles dispersed in a liquid crystal lead to distortions of the director field. The distortions are responsible for long-range effective colloidal interactions whose asymptotic behaviour is well understood. The short distance…
We use molecular dynamics to study the ordering of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical particle or droplet. Homeotropic boundary conditions and strong anchoring create a hedgehog director configuration on the particle surface and in…
Using mesoscopic numerical simulations and analytical theory we investigate the coarsening of the solvent structure around a colloidal particle emerging after a temperature quench of the colloid surface. Qualitative differences in the…
We propose a hybrid lattice Boltzmann algorithm to simulate the hydrodynamics of colloidal particles inside a liquid crystalline host. To validate our algorithm, we study the static and the microrheology of a colloid in a nematic, with…
We numerically study the orientation deformations in nematic liquid crystals around charged particles. We set up a Ginzburg-Landau theory with inhomogeneous electric field. If the dielectric anisotropy varepsilon_1 is positive, Saturn ring…
A multicomponent mixture of Janus colloids with distinct catalytic coats and phoretic mobilities is a promising theoretical system to explore the collective behavior arising from nonreciprocal interactions. An active colloid produces (or…
We study catalytic Janus swimmers and Escherichia coli bacteria swimming in a two-dimensional colloidal crystal. The Janus swimmers orbit individual colloids and hop between colloids stochastically, with a hopping rate that varies inversely…
Rod-like objects at high packing fractions can form smectic phases, where the rods break rotational and translational symmetry by forming lamellae. Smectic defects thereby include both discontinuities in the rod orientational order…
Motivated by recent experiments on the rod-like virus bacteriophage fd, confined to circular and annular domains, we present a theoretical study of structural transitions in these geometries. Using the continuum theory of nematic liquid…
Colloidal Janus spheres in water (one hemisphere attractive and the other repulsive) assemble into two-dimensional hexagonal crystals with orientational order controlled by anisotropic interactions. We exploit the decoupled translational…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
Charge profiles in liquid electrolytes are of crucial importance for applications, such as supercapacitors, fuel cells, batteries, or the self-assembly of particles in colloidal or biological settings. However, creating localised (screened)…
We present a novel, self-consistent and robust theoretical model to investigate elastic interactions between topological defects in liquid crystal shells. Accounting for the non-concentric nature of the shell in a simple manner, we are able…
The geometric shape, symmetry, and topology of colloidal particles often allow for controlling colloidal phase behavior and physical properties of these soft matter systems. In liquid crystalline dispersions, colloidal particles with low…
We study experimentally and theoretically structural defects which are formed during the transition from a laser cooled cloud to a Coulomb crystal, consisting of tens of ions in a linear radio frequency trap. We demonstrate the creation of…
Field theories predict that phase transitions sequentially breaking continuous and discrete symmetries can generate hybrid topological structures in which defects of different dimensionalities merge. We report experimental and numerical…
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…
A gold-capped Janus particle suspended in a near-critical binary liquid mixture can self-propel under illumination. We have immobilized such a particle in a narrow channel and studied the nonequilibrium dynamics of a binary solvent around…
We theoretically show how two impurity defects in a crystalline structure can be entangled through coupling with the crystal. We demonstrate this with a harmonic chain of trapped ions in which two ions of a different species are embedded.…