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We propose a general formalism to characterize orientational frustration of smectic liquid crystals in confinement by interpreting the emerging networks of grain boundaries as objects with a topological charge. In a formal idealization,…
Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically distort the layers due to the boundary conditions…
Anisotropic rod-like particles form liquid crystalline phases with varying degrees of orientational and translational order. When confined geometrically, these phases can give rise to topological defects, which can be selected and…
Curved particles have been shown to stabilize a range of states with unique order in dense suspensions of colloidal bent core liquid crystals. The shape of the colloidal rods encourages the formation of curved director fields. However,…
Smectic liquid crystals are charcterized by layers that have a preferred uniform spacing and vanishing curvature in their ground state. Dislocations in the smectics play an important role in phase nucleation, layer reorientation, and…
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…
We explore length segregation in binary mixtures of spherocylinders of lengths $L_1$ and $L_2$ with the same diameter $D$ which are tangentially confined on a spherical surface of radius $R$. The orientation of spherocylinders is…
The persistent dynamics in systems out of equilibrium, particularly those characterized by annihilation and creation of topological defects, is known to involve complicated spatiotemporal processes and is deemed difficult to control. Here…
Using density-functional theory, we have analyzed the phase behavior of binary mixtures of hard rods of different lengths and diameters. Previous studies have shown a strong tendency of smectic phases of these mixtures to segregate and, in…
In this work, we investigate the topological properties of knotted defects in smectic liquid crystals. Our story begins with screw dislocations, whose radial surface structure can be smoothly accommodated on $S^3$ for fibred knots by using…
The ordering of rod-like particles in soft, deformable containers emerges from the interplay of anisotropic interactions, geometric confinement, and boundary compliance. This competition couples internal particle organization to container…
Elongated colloidal rods at sufficient packing conditions are known to form stable lamellar or smectic phases. Using a simplified volume-exclusion model, we propose a generic equation-of-state for hard-rod smectics that is robust against…
Confined samples of liquid crystals are characterized by a variety of topological defects and can be exposed to external constraints such as extreme confinements with nontrivial topology. Here we explore the intrinsic structure of smectic…
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…
Using particle-resolved molecular-dynamics simulations, we compute the phase diagram for soft repulsive spherocylinders confined on the surface of a sphere. While crystal (K), smectic (Sm), and isotropic (I) phases exhibit a stability…
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…
We study the formation and evolution of localized geometrical defects in an indented cylindrical elastic shell using a combination of experiment and numerical simulation. We find that as a symmetric localized indentation on a…
Grain boundaries in extremely confined colloidal smectics possess a topological fine structure with coexisting nematic and tetratic symmetry of the director field. An alternative way to approach the problem of smectic topology is via the…
The assembly of colloids in nematic liquid crystals via topological defects has been extensively studied for spherical particles, and investigations of other colloid shapes have revealed a wide array of new assembly behaviors. We show,…
We exploit the long-ranged elastic fields inherent to confined nematic liquid crystals to assemble colloidal particles trapped at the liquid crystal interface into reconfigurable structures with complex symmetries and packings. Spherical…