相关论文: Effect of Director Distortions on Polymer-Liquid C…
This article analyzes modulated phases in liquid crystals, from the long-established cholesteric and blue phases to the recently discovered twist-bend, splay-bend, and splay nematic phases, as well as the twist-grain-boundary (TGB) and…
A scattering polarizer is created by subjecting a polymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film to tensile strain. The optomechanical properties of the film are investigated by simultaneously measuring the stress-strain and polarization…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
Using a version of density-functional theory which combines Onsager approximation and fundamental-measure theory for spatially nonuniform phases, we have studied the phase diagram of freely rotating hard rectangles and hard discorectangles.…
Living and engineered systems rely on the stable coexistence of two interspersed liquid phases. Yet surface tension drives their complete separation. Here we show that stable droplets of uniform and tuneable size can be produced through…
We show that, when a gold nanoparticle is coated by a thin layer of nematic liquid crystal, the deformation produced by the nanoparticle surface can enhance the splitting of the nanoparticle surface plasmon. We consider three plausible…
Placing colloidal particles in predesigned sites represents a major challenge of the current state-of-the-art colloidal science. Nematic liquid crystals with spatially varying director patterns represent a promising approach to achieve a…
Dynamics of small particles, both living such as swimming bacteria and inanimate, such as colloidal spheres, has fascinated scientists for centuries. If one could learn how to control and streamline their chaotic motion, that would open…
Spatial distributions are presented that quantitatively capture how polymer properties (e.g., segment alignment, density, and potential energy) vary with distance from nascent polymer crystals (nuclei) in prototypical polyethylene melts. It…
In liquid crystal elastomers, the orientational order of liquid crystals is coupled with elastic distortions of crosslinked polymer networks. Previous theoretical research has described these materials through two different approaches: a…
Polarization dependence of opto-mechanical behavior of monodomain photochromic glassy liquid crystal (LC) polymers under polarized ultraviolet light (PUV) is studied. Trans-cis photo-isomerization is generally known to be most intense at…
In drying liquid films of polymer-colloid mixtures, the stratification in which polymers are placed on top of larger colloids is studied. It is often presumed that the formation of segregated polymer-colloid layers is solely due to the…
We perform a thermodynamic analysis of the polymerization-induced phase separation in nanoparticle-monomer-polymer blends using a simple model recently proposed by V. V. Ginzburg (Macromolecules 2005, 38, 2362.). The model was adapted for…
Spatially uniform electric fields have been used to induce instabilities in liquids and polymers, and to orient and deform ordered phases of block-copolymers. Here we discuss the demixing phase transition occurring in liquid mixtures when…
Porous gels -- gels with solvent-filled pores that are much larger than their mesh size -- are widely used in engineering and biomedical applications due to their tunable mechanics, high water content, and selective permeability. Among…
Ordinary nematic liquid crystals are characterized by having a uniform director field as ground state. In such a state, the director is the same everywhere and no distortion is to be seen at all. We give a definition of uniform distortion…
Disclination lines in nematic liquid crystals can exist in different geometric conformations, characterised by their director profile. In certain confined, colloidal and even more prominently in chiral nematics, the director profile may…
We explore a novel strategy of patterning nematic elastomers that does not require inscribing the texture directly. It is based on varying the dopant concentration that, beside shifting the phase transition point, affects the nematic…
Partially phase-separated liquid-crystal/polymer dispersions display highly fibrillar domain morphologies that are dramatically different from the typical structures found in isotropic mixtures. To explain this, we numerically explore the…
Self-assembly of colloidal particles due to elastic interactions in nematic liquid crystals promises tunable composite materials and can be guided by exploiting surface functionalization, geometric shape and topology, though these means of…