相关论文: Paradoxes for Chromonic Liquid Crystal Droplets
When liquid-crystal elastomers are prepared without any alignment, disordered polydomain structures emerge as the materials are cooled into the nematic phase. These polydomain structures have been attributed to quenched disorder in the…
We numerically study the dynamics of quasi-two dimensional cholesteric liquid crystal droplets in the presence of a time-dependent electric field, rotating at constant angular velocity. A surfactant sitting at droplet interface is also…
Dynamic simulations of the isotropic-nematic phase transformation of liquid crystal droplets under homeotropic anchoring are found to predict chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics. These observations occur when using material parameters for…
In this paper we revisit the problem of a nematic liquid crystal in contact with patterned substrates. The substrate is modelled as a periodic array of parallel infinite grooves of well-defined cross section sculpted on a chemically…
The general Ericksen-Leslie system for the flow of nematic liquid crystals is reconsidered in the non-isothermal case aiming for thermodynamically consistent models. The non-isothermal model is then investigated analytically. A fairly…
Suspended droplets of cholesteric (chiral nematic) liquid crystals spontaneously rotate in the presence of a heat flux due to a temperature gradient, a phenomenon known as Lehmann effect. So far, it is not clear whether this effect is due…
Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director cause long-range anisotropic interactions and…
A novel phenomenological approach to the analysis of the conductivities of incoherent layered crystals is presented. It is based on the fundamental relationship between the resistive anisotropy $\sigma_{ab}/\sigma_c$ and the ratio of the…
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic…
We propose lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs) as a distinct class of materials for organic electronics. In water, the chromonic molecules stack on top of each other into elongated aggregates that form orientationally ordered…
We theoretically investigate under what conditions the director field in a spindle-shaped nematic droplet or tactoid obtains a twisted, parity-broken structure. By minimizing the sum of the bulk elastic and surface energies, we show that a…
Solitons in liquid crystals are spatially localised stable configuration of the liquid crystal orientational order parameter that exhibit emergent particle-like properties such as mutual interaction, translational motion and reconfigurable…
We introduce a phenomenological theory for a new class of soft active fluids, with the ability to synchronise. Our theoretical framework describes the macroscopic behaviour of a collection of interacting anisotropic elements with cyclic…
A classic result due to G.I.Taylor is that a drop placed in a uniform electric field becomes a prolate or oblate spheroid, which is axisymmetrically aligned with the applied field. We report an instability and symmetry-breaking transition…
An unresolved issue in the theory of liquid crystals is the molecular basis of the electroclinic effect in the smectic-A phase. Recent x-ray scattering experiments suggest that, in a class of siloxane-containing liquid crystals, an electric…
Liquid crystals formed of bent-core molecules are exotic materials that exhibit the twist-bend nematic phase. This arises when an energetic preference for nonzero local bend distortion is accommodated via twist in the texture, resulting in…
Liquid crystal elastomers are rubber-like solids with liquid crystalline mesogens (stiff, rod-like molecules) incorporated either into the main chain or as a side chain of the polymer. These solids display a range of unusual…
The nonlinear elastic properties of nematic liquid crystals have acquired new interest with the recent experimental observation of bulk modulated nematic phases which are composed by achiral molecules. We extend the Oseen-Zocher-Frank's…
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,…
I describe new phases of a chiral liquid crystal with nematic and hexatic order. I find a conical phase, similar to that of a cholesteric in an applied magnetic field for Frank elastic constants $K_2>K_3$. I discuss the role of fluctuations…