Author(s): Mariana Casaroto, Cesare Chiccoli, Luiz Roberto Evangelista, Paolo Pasini, Rodolfo Teixeira de Souza, Claudio Zannoni, and Rafael Soares ZolaWe consider a nematic liquid crystal film confined to a flat cell with homeotropic and planar patterned hybrid anchoring and show, using Monte Carlo simulations, the possibility of the system to stabilize lin […]
Author(s): J. Thoen, G. Cordoyiannis, E. Korblova, D. M. Walba, N. A. Clark, W. Jiang, G. H. Mehl, and C. GlorieuxThe idea that rodlike molecules possessing an electric dipole moment could exhibit a ferroelectric nematic phase was suggested more than a century ago. However, only recently such a phase has been reported for two quite different liquid crystals: […]
Author(s): Péter Gurin, Sakineh Mizani, and Szabolcs VargaWe study the orientational ordering properties of some quasi-one-dimensional hard-body fluids, where the anisotropic particles are confined to a straight line, while they are free to rotate in a plane. We examine a class of models where the close-packing structure is degenerate, i.e., the highest po…[ […]
Author(s): Takumi Sato, Hiroaki Tsujinoue, Noriyoshi Arai, and Kazuaki Z. TakahashiBlue phases (BPs) consist of three-dimensional self-assembled structures formed by a double-twisted columnar arrangement of liquid crystal molecules. Although their unique optical and structural properties render BPs particularly useful for applications such as liquid crystal […]
Author(s): Nilanthi P. Haputhanthrige, Sathyanarayana Paladugu, Maxim O. Lavrentovich, and Oleg D. LavrentovichLinear 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 at singula […]
Author(s): Yucen Han, Jan Lagerwall, and Apala MajumdarThe transition from a nematic to an isotropic state in a self-closing spherical liquid crystal shell with tangential alignment is a stimulating phenomenon to investigate, as the topology dictates that the shell exhibits local isotropic points at all temperatures in the nematic phase range, in the fo…[Phy […]
Author(s): O. Trushkevych, V. Reshetnyak, M. Turvey, and R. S. EdwardsPolymer dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) films are formed of droplets of liquid crystal (LC) held in a polymer matrix. Similar to aligned LC films, PDLCs exhibit the acousto-optic (AO) effect when excited by acoustic waves of sufficient amplitude, whereby the PDLC film becomes transparent i […]
Author(s): Mohammadamin Safdari, Roya Zandi, and Paul van der SchootNematic tactoids are spindle-shaped droplets of a nematic phase nucleated in the co-existing isotropic phase. According to equilibrium theory, their internal structure and shape are controlled by a balance between the elastic deformation of the director field, induced by the preferred anchor […]
Author(s): Alicia Sit, Francesco Di Colandrea, Alessio D'Errico, and Ebrahim KarimiWhen an external field is applied across a liquid-crystal cell, the twist and tilt distributions cannot be calculated analytically and must be extracted numerically. In the standard approach, the Euler-Lagrange equations are derived from the minimization of the free energ […]
Author(s): Jun Zhao, Yiqing Sun, Yuntong Dai, Jing Wu, and Kai LiOptically responsive liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) devices have thriving potential to flourish in soft robots and microdrives, owing to their advantages of remote controllability, structural simplicity, and no power supply. In terms of illumination-driven modes, most research has focused on th […]