Based on a nonlinear extension of the Ericksen-Leslie theory, taking into account the entropy balance equation, a theoretical study of a thermally excited vortex flow in a microsized hybrid-aligned nematic (HAN) volume was carried out. Analysis of the numerical results show that due to interaction b…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 064702] Published Tue Dec 24, 2024

Statistical mechanical theory based on the concept of mean-force potentials is used to describe anchoring transitions in a liquid-crystal system near a solid surface. This approach took into account not only the two-particle correlations between the nearest and next-nearest neighbors, but also the s…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 064701] Published Tue Dec 17, 2024

Platinum-coated Janus colloids exhibit self-propelled motion in aqueous solution via the catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Here, we report their motion in a uniformly aligned nematic phase of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal, disodium cromoglycate (DSCG). When active Janus colloids are…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 054704] Published Thu Nov 21, 2024

Composite materials made of polymers and liquid crystals have been widely employed in smart windows, optical filters, and bistable displays. However, it is often difficult to decipher the role of the polymer network architecture on the alignment and the texture of liquid crystals. In this study, we …

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 054703] Published Thu Nov 14, 2024

Pair correlations for a polar liquid-crystal (LC) system have been theoretically investigated by means of integral equation approach. Using the dipolar Gay-Berne (GB) interactions between the molecules that composed the LC system, calculations of the nearest-neighbor (NN) and next-NN (NNN) correlato…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 054702] Published Thu Nov 07, 2024

We derive several versions of the cell theory for a crystal phase of hard equilateral triangles. To that purpose we analytically calculated the free area of a frozen oriented or freely rotating particle inside the cavity formed by its neighbors in a chiral configuration of their orientations. From t…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 054701] Published Fri Nov 01, 2024

This work further investigates an aspect of the phase behavior of hard circular arcs whose phase diagram has been recently calculated by Monte Carlo numerical simulations: the non-nematicity of the filamentary phase that hard minor circular arcs form. Both second-virial density-functional theory and…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 044701] Published Tue Oct 15, 2024

Polar-ordered fluids are of interest both fundamentally and from an application standpoint. The recently discovered ferroelectric nematic phase is an example of a polar-ordered fluid, and while there has been extensive research interest in these materials, some of the fundamental properties are yet …

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 044702] Published Tue Oct 15, 2024

We have investigated, by Monte Carlo simulation, the orientational structure of very thin films of a discotic liquid crystal (DLC) confined between hybrid walls of controllable penetrability, as a function of wall separation $L_z$. Our purpose was to clarify whether, as predicted by continuum theory, t…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 034705] Published Thu Sep 26, 2024

The self-assembly of liquid crystal droplets and shells represents a captivating frontier in soft matter physics, promising precision engineering of functional materials. In this study, we delve into the phase behavior and investigate defect formation patterns in spherical shell-confined discotic li…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 034704] Published Mon Sep 23, 2024

The synthesis of ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals (FNLCs) concludes the long wait for their existence and potential usage in multiple liquid crystal based applications. In FNLCs, electric polarization in the nematic phase significantly decreases the switching time of in-on display pixels. In th…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 034703] Published Mon Sep 09, 2024

Motivated by the variety of applications in which nematic Hele-Shaw flow occurs, a theoretical model for Hele-Shaw flow of a nematic liquid crystal is formulated and analyzed. We derive the thin-film Ericksen-Leslie equations that govern nematic Hele-Shaw flow, and consider two important limiting ca…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 034702] Published Fri Sep 06, 2024

We study living liquid crystals (LLCs), which are an amalgam of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) and active matter (AM). These LLCs are placed in contact with surfaces which impose planar/homeotropic boundary conditions on the director field of the LC and the polarization field of the AM. The interplay…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 034701] Published Tue Sep 03, 2024

Ordered chain structures from topological defects of opposite charges (“necklaces” of defects) were prepared and their dynamics and cooperative rearrangement were investigated. We studied topological defects in nematic films with change of the Euler characteristic induced by temperature. Topological…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 024703] Published Tue Aug 27, 2024

Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals are currently being subject to a plethora of investigations since they are of great fundamental interest and could potentially foster promising applications. However, many basic aspects are still poorly understood, among which the problem of the dielectric const…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, L022701] Published Tue Aug 27, 2024

Electrohydrodynamic phenomena in liquid crystals constitute an old but still very active research area. The reason is that these phenomena play the key role in various applications of liquid crystals and due to the general interest of the physical community in out-of-equilibrium systems. Nematic liq…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 024701] Published Mon Aug 12, 2024

A comprehensive dynamic analysis of the dielectric relaxation-time data across a broad temperature range for both isotropic and nematic phases has been conducted on the CBO3O.Py liquid crystal dimer, the shorter chain-length compound within the highly nonsymmetric pyrene-based series of liquid cryst…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 024702] Published Mon Aug 12, 2024

We 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 line and point defects. The planar anchoring surface is patterned with a chessboardlike grid of…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 014704] Published Fri Jul 19, 2024

The 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: RM734 [4-[(4-nitrophenoxy)carbonyl)]phenyl 2,4-dimeth…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 014703] Published Wed Jul 17, 2024

We 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…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 014702] Published Mon Jul 15, 2024

Blue 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 displays, BPs typically…

[Phys. Rev. E 110, 014701] Published Mon Jul 08, 2024

Linear 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 singular disclinations in a nematic liquid crystal, predes…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 064703] Published Tue Jun 18, 2024

The 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…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 064702] Published Tue Jun 11, 2024

Polymer 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 in the exci…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 064701] Published Wed Jun 05, 2024

Nematic 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 anchoring of t…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054706] Published Wed May 29, 2024

When 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 energy of the system and then sol…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054705] Published Thu May 23, 2024

Optically 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 the dyn…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054704] Published Tue May 21, 2024

A coarse-grained molecular Monte Carlo simulation of the barocaloric effect in a model Gay-Berne liquid crystal is presented, following the so-called indirect approach wherein the caloric response is obtained from thermodynamic arguments applied to the simulated equilibrium relation between pressure…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, L052701] Published Wed May 15, 2024

A photonic crystal microcavity with the liquid crystal resonant layer tunable by heating has been implemented. The multiple vanishing resonant lines corresponding to optical bound states in the continuum are observed. The abrupt change in the resonant linewidth near the vanishing point can be used f…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054703] Published Fri May 10, 2024

We explore the structure and magnetic-field response of edge dislocations in Grandjean-Cano wedge cells filled with chiral mixtures of the ferroelectric nematic mesogen DIO. Upon cooling, the ordering changes from paraelectric in the cholesteric phase ${\mathrm{N}}^{*}$ to antiferroelectric in the smectic ${\mathrm{SmZ}}_{\mathrm{A}}^{*}$ and…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054702] Published Mon May 06, 2024

We analyze a mean-field model for mixtures involving biaxial nematogens and dipolar nanoparticles, taking into account not only orientational and isotropic pair interactions between nematogens but also orientational nematogen-nanoparticle interactions. We determine bulk equilibrium phase diagrams fo…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 054701] Published Fri May 03, 2024

Active materials possess unique properties of being able to respond autonomously to external stimuli, yet realizing and regulating the motion behavior of active machines remains a major challenge. Conventional control approaches, including sensor control and external device control, are both complex…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 044705] Published Mon Apr 29, 2024

The theory based on numerical study of the system of hydrodynamic equations, which includes the director motion, shows that under the influence of crossed electric $\mathbf{\text{E}}$ and magnetic $\mathbf{\text{B}}$ fields, the director reorients in such a way that the transient quasiperiodic patterns may arise in microsized nematic …

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 044704] Published Fri Apr 26, 2024

This paper presents the results of numerical calculations revealing how the structural parameters (i.e., the pitch $p_{\mathrm{TB}}$, the spatial period $p_{\mathrm{SB}}$, and the tilt angle ${\theta }_{\mathrm{TB}}$ or ${\theta }_{\mathrm{SB}}$) of twist-bend nematics ($N_{\mathrm{TB}}$) and splay-bend nematics ($N_{\mathrm{SB}}$) depend on the values of elastic constants in Dozov's theory [I. Do…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 044702] Published Fri Apr 12, 2024

When a voltage is applied to a uniformly aligned nematic liquid crystal, a characteristic texture designated as reverse tilt domain (RTD) appears. The RTD, surrounded by a domain wall, gradually shrinks and finally disappears. The domain wall splits into a pair of disclination lines by increase of t…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 044703] Published Fri Apr 12, 2024

The stick-slip phenomenon widely exists in contact mechanics, from the macroscale to the nanoscale. During cholesteric-nematic unwinding by external fields, there is controversy regarding the role of planar surface anchoring, which may induce discontinuous stick-slip behaviors despite the well-known…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 044701] Published Tue Apr 09, 2024

Self-oscillating systems possess the ability to convert ambient energy directly into mechanical work, and new types of self-oscillating systems are worth designing for practical applications in energy harvesters, engines and actuators. Taking inspiration from the four-stroke engine. A concept for a …

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 034701] Published Mon Mar 04, 2024

We report experimental investigations of a liquid crystal comprising thiophene-based achiral bent-core banana shaped molecules. The compound exhibits the following phase sequence on cooling: Isotropic (517.4 K), $N$ (514.9 K), de Vries SmA (402 K), SmC. Practically no layer contraction was observed ac…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 024703] Published Mon Feb 26, 2024

Twist-bend (${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{tb}}$) and ferroelectric (${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{F}}$) nematic liquid crystals exhibit several novel effects and new physical properties. Here, we report experimental studies on the phase diagram and some physical properties of binary mixtures of CB9CB and RM734 mesogens. Both N-${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{tb}}$ and N-${\mathrm{N}}_{\mathrm{F}}$ phase transition tempe…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 024702] Published Tue Feb 13, 2024

Self-oscillating coupled systems possess the ability to actively absorb external environmental energy to sustain their motion. This quality endows them with autonomy and sustainability, making them have application value in the fields of synchronization and clustering, thereby furthering research an…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 024701] Published Mon Feb 05, 2024

The dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional coalescence of isotropic droplets in nematic liquid crystal environment was studied. Investigations were made in confined geometry of a Hele-Shaw optical cell with different transverse droplet sizes. The existence of three distinct dynamic regimes was found for …

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 014702] Published Fri Jan 26, 2024

Volterra's definition of dislocations in crystals geometrically distinguishes edge and screw defects according to whether the Burgers vector is perpendicular or parallel to the defect. A homotopy-theoretic analysis of dislocations as topological defects fails to differentiate edge and screw. Here we…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, L012701] Published Wed Jan 24, 2024

Only a few years have passed since the discovery of polar nematics, and now they are becoming the most actively studied liquid-crystal materials. Despite numerous breakthrough findings made recently, a theoretical systematization is still lacking. In the present paper, we take a step toward systemat…

[Phys. Rev. E 109, 014701] Published Thu Jan 18, 2024

Chromonic nematics are lyotropic liquid crystals that have already been known for half a century, but have only recently raised interest for their potential applications in life sciences. Determining elastic constants and anchoring strengths for rigid substrates has thus become a priority in the cha…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 064701] Published Wed Dec 27, 2023

Using a linear hydrodynamic theory, we demonstrate that Faraday waves occur in liquid crystalline fluids. The use of already experimentally known material parameters of a $N$-(4-methoxybenzylidene)-4-butylaniline liquid crystal allows us to confirm and realize the predictions of this theory. It provid…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 054703] Published Wed Nov 22, 2023

Light sources that switch periodically over time have a wide range of application value in life and engineering, and generally require additional controller to periodically switch circuits to achieve periodic lighting. In this paper, a self-oscillating spring oscillator based on optically responsive…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 054702] Published Fri Nov 17, 2023

The main objective of this work is to clarify the role that taper-shaped elongated molecules, i.e., molecules with one end wider than the other, can play in stabilizing orientational order. The focus is exclusively on entropy-driven self-organization induced by purely excluded volume interactions. D…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 054701] Published Thu Nov 09, 2023

Electrically driven kinklike distortion regimes in a microsized liquid crystal channel have been investigated both experimentally and analytically. Kinklike distortion waves were excited by the interaction between the electric field $\mathbf{\text{E}}$ and the gradient $\mathbf{\nabla }\widehat{\mathbf{\text{n}}}$ of the director field in a homogeneously ali…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 034703] Published Wed Sep 27, 2023

The properties of composites of mesogens and two-dimensional (2D) materials are of great interest due to their practical applications in flexible displays, optoelectronics, microelectronics, and novel nanodevices. The properties of such composites are very complex and strongly depend on the interact…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 034702] Published Tue Sep 12, 2023

We report the effect on the phase transitional behavior of 8OCB liquid crystal (LC) doped with functionalized CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) in different concentrations. The temperature-dependent data of high-resolution optical birefringence and dielectric anisotropy are utilized to characterize the cr…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 034701] Published Mon Sep 11, 2023

We study pairwise interactions between localized topological structures in chiral magnetic and cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) systems confined in the planar geometry. Our calculations for magnetics are based on the lattice model that takes into account the bulk and surface anisotropies along with …

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 024705] Published Thu Aug 31, 2023

We study the director configurations of nematic liquid crystal (NLC) droplets with homeotropic anchoring in a magnetic field and report observation of a magnetic-field-driven transition from a deformed radial to an axial-with-defect configuration. Magnetic-field-induced transitions in NLC droplets d…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 024704] Published Mon Aug 21, 2023

We investigated the properties of cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) being in an external static magnetic field directed along the helix axis. We considered a dichroic CLC, that is, CLC with parameters $\mathrm{Re}\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{\mathrm{Re}{\varepsilon }_1-\mathrm{Re}{\varepsilon }_2}{2}=0$ and $\mathrm{Im}\mathrm{\Delta }=\frac{\mathrm{Im}{\varepsilon }_1-\mathrm{Im}{\varepsilon }_2}{2}\ne 0$, where ${\varepsilon }_{1,2}$ are the principal values of the local dielectric…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 024703] Published Tue Aug 15, 2023

Proton-decoupled deuterium NMR spectra were obtained for an asymmetric liquid crystal dimer 1-(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yloxy)-6-(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)hexane (CB6OCB) containing a single -${\mathrm{CD}}_2$- group. The sample has two nematic liquid crystal phases: a twist-bend nematic, $N_{TB}$, at the lowest temperature fo…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 024702] Published Mon Aug 14, 2023

An amalgam of nematic liquid crystals and active matter, referred to as living liquid crystals, is a promising self-healing material with futuristic applications for targeted delivery of information and microcargo. We provide a phenomenological model to study the symbiotic pattern dynamics in this c…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 024701] Published Wed Aug 02, 2023

The stability conditions of twist-bend nematics given by Barbero et al. [Phys. Rev. E 92, 030501(R) (2015)] lead to doubtful conclusions when the influence of the magnetic field on the $N_{\mathrm{TB}}$ structure is analyzed. For this reason, the stability criteria have been redetermined in the present paper. The…

[Phys. Rev. E 108, 014701] Published Mon Jul 31, 2023

The present study investigates the arrangement of hollow pyramidal cone shells and their interactions with degenerate planar anchoring on the inner and outer surfaces of particles within the nematic host. The shell thickness is in order of the nematic coherence length. The numerical behavior of coll…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 064703] Published Thu Jun 22, 2023

Not every particle that forms a nematic liquid crystal makes a smectic. The particle tip is critical for this behavior. Ellipsoids do not make a smectic, but spherocylinders do. Similarly, only those $N$-CB alkylcyanobiphenyls with sufficiently long ($N\ge 8$ carbons) alkane tails form smectics. We underst…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 064702] Published Tue Jun 20, 2023

The response to an applied electric field in the $q_T=1/2$ subphase of the MC881-MC452 binary mixture system is studied by using thick homeotropically aligned cells. In the ordinary antiferroelectric $\mathrm{Sm}{C}_A^{*}$ and 1/2 (sub)phases, some nonplanar asymmetric distortions in the antiferroelectric unit cell str…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 064701] Published Thu Jun 01, 2023

We present a detailed analysis of $\mathit{c}$-director anchoring measurements on simple edge dislocations at the surface of smectic-$C_A$ films (steps). Indications show that the $\mathit{c}$-director anchoring on the dislocations originates from a local and partial melting of the dislocation core that depends on the ancho…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 054702] Published Mon May 22, 2023

We propose an approach combining the continuum theory and molecular-statistical approach for a suspension of carbon nanotubes based on a negative diamagnetic anisotropy liquid crystal. Using the continuum theory, we show that in the case of an infinite sample in suspension it is possible to observe …

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 054701] Published Wed May 17, 2023

The mesogen 1,′′7′′-bis(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)heptane (CB7CB), doped with a small quantity of an amphiphilic compound, is examined in its biphasic state in which twist-bend nematic ($N_{\mathrm{TB}}$) drops are dispersed in the isotropic fluid. Various flexoelectric and electrokinetic responses of small drops in …

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 044703] Published Fri Apr 28, 2023

For recent applications, liquid crystal-carbon nanotube based nanocomposite systems have been proven to be highly attractive. In this paper, we give a thorough analysis of a nanocomposite system made of both functionalized and nonfunctionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes that are disseminated in a…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 044704] Published Fri Apr 28, 2023

This paper complements a previous study of the isotropic and nematic phases of the Gay-Berne liquid-crystal model [Mehri et al., Phys. Rev. E 105, 064703 (2022)] with a study of its smectic-$B$ phase found at high density and low temperatures. We find also in this phase strong correlations between th…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 044702] Published Thu Apr 27, 2023

After quenching, a liquid crystal film might contain thousands of topological defects which annihilate during coarsening. The authors analyze high-speed video of the coarsening process using neural networks, and find agreement with theoretical predictions and simulations.

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 044701] Published Mon Apr 03, 2023

We study the self-organization in a monolayer (a two-dimensional system) of flexible planar trimer particles. The molecules are made up of two mesogenic units linked by a spacer, all of which are modeled as hard needles of the same length. Each molecule can dynamically adopt two conformational state…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034707] Published Thu Mar 30, 2023

The mesogen CB7CB [1″,7″-bis(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)heptane], mixed with a small quantity of a long chain amphiphile, is examined for the structural features of twist-bend nematic $\left(N_{\mathrm{TB}}\right)$ drops acting as colloidal inclusions in the isotropic and nematic environments. In the isotropic phase, the drops n…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034706] Published Tue Mar 28, 2023

On the basis of Landau–de Gennes theory and the finite-difference iterative method, the autonomic modulation of chiral inversion in a cylindrical cavity with degenerate planar anchoring is investigated. Under the applied helical twisting power (inversely related to the pitch $P$), a chiral inversion c…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034705] Published Mon Mar 27, 2023

Bent-Core banana-shaped molecules exhibit tilted polar smectic phases with macroscopically chiral layer order even though the constituent molecules are achiral in nature. Here, we show that the excluded volume interactions between the bent-core molecules account for this spontaneous breaking of chir…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034704] Published Fri Mar 24, 2023

Density functional theory (DFT) calculations and x-ray diffraction techniques were employed to evaluate the value of the tilt angle in ferroelectric smectic $C^{*}$ and antiferroelectric smectic $C_A^{*}$ phases. Five homologues from the chiral series denoted as $3\mathrm{F}m\mathrm{HPhF}6(m=2,4,5,6,7)$, based on 4-(1-methylhepty…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034703] Published Fri Mar 17, 2023

A theoretical investigation of weak-anchoring effects in a thin two-dimensional pinned static ridge of nematic liquid crystal resting on a flat solid substrate in an atmosphere of passive gas is performed. Specifically, we solve a reduced version of the general system of governing equations recently…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034702] Published Thu Mar 16, 2023

Self-assembly of colloidal particles into predefined structures is a promising way to design inexpensive manmade materials with advanced macroscopic properties. Doping of nematic liquid crystals (LCs) with nanoparticles has a series of advantages in addressing these grand scientific and engineering …

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 034701] Published Tue Mar 07, 2023

The free-ion concentration in a nematic liquid crystal (LC) is found to be significantly reduced when gold nano-urchins (AuNUs) of 50-nm diameter are dispersed in the LC in dilute concentrations. The nano-urchins on AuNUs trap a significant amount of mobile ions, reducing the free-ion concentration …

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 024705] Published Mon Feb 27, 2023

Authors of previous studies have focused on wrinkling phenomena in thin films with relatively large stiffness under mechanical loadings. A liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) is a smart soft material sensitive to various environmental stimuli. In this letter, we investigate the wrinkling instability of a…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, L022701] Published Thu Feb 23, 2023

When particles are made to flow through a chiral liquid crystal phase, they can induce flows in the liquid crystal and as well as a rotation of the director. This paper describes experiments with a flux of ethanol through a chiral smectic-C* film, and gives an interpretation of the results in the context of the Leslie theory.

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 024703] Published Wed Feb 22, 2023

Ethanol flowing through a chiral smectic-C* film can produce roughly circular patterns, but under different conditions also spiral patterns. Further experiments show these patterns, and their theoretical explanation is confirmed.

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 024704] Published Wed Feb 22, 2023

Within the entire mesomorphic range, high-precision dielectric anisotropy data with the high-temperature resolution is presented for a highly polar smectic-$A$ liquid crystal 8CB (octylcyanobiphenyl) as well as 8CB nanocomposites doped with both pristine multi-walled carbon nanotubes (p-MWCNTs) and ca…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 024702] Published Tue Feb 14, 2023

In equilibrium hard-rod fluids, and in effective hard-rod descriptions of anisotropic soft-particle systems, the transition from the isotropic (I) phase to the nematic phase (N) is observed above the rod aspect ratio $L/D=3.70$ as predicted by Onsager. We examine the fate of this criterion in a molecu…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 024701] Published Mon Feb 06, 2023

The buckling transition of smectic liquid crystals (LCs) is important not only as fundamental physics but also for the rational design of devices to make use of their optical and mechanical properties. However, there exists a huge gap between the specific knowledge and universal analytical formulati…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 014703] Published Tue Jan 31, 2023

The reflection spectrum of linearly polarized light by a system consisting of a metal film and two adjacent sequentially located cholesteric liquid crystals (CLCs) with opposite helical twists is theoretically studied. The system contains a dielectric index-matching layer (DIML) between the metal fi…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 014702] Published Mon Jan 30, 2023

High-resolution calorimetry has played a significant role in providing detailed information on phase transitions in liquid crystals. In particular, adiabatic scanning calorimetry (ASC), capable of providing simultaneous information on the temperature dependence of the specific enthalpy $h\left(T\right)$ and on t…

[Phys. Rev. E 107, 014701] Published Thu Jan 12, 2023

We identified three types of flow in a nematic liquid crystal parallelepiped cell subjected to an ac electric field at low frequency. Our observations show the existence of translational flow, backflow, and convection flow in parallelepiped cells. We measured the backflow velocity by introducing mic…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 064702] Published Thu Dec 22, 2022

Twist-coupled elastic deformations are ubiquitous and in the limelight of interest for next-generation self-shaping materials. Here, we describe how twist dynamics under fixed anchoring lead to bend deformation and defect dynamics in a field-unwound chiral liquid crystal material. We use the Q-tenso…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 064701] Published Tue Dec 20, 2022

The purpose of this article is to describe the physical mechanism responsible for the appearance of both traveling and nontraveling distortions in a microsized homogeneously aligned nematic (HAN) film under the effect of a large electric field. Numerical studies have been carried out to describe bot…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 054703] Published Wed Nov 23, 2022

We have performed dielectric spectroscopy and thermally stimulated-depolarization-current experiments to study the molecular dynamics of the twist-bend nematic phase close to the glass transition of two members of the 1″,7′-bis(4-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl)alkane homologous series ($\mathrm{CB}n\mathrm{CB}$): the liquid cryst…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 054702] Published Mon Nov 21, 2022

A hydrogel which spontaneously swells in an aqueous polymer solution was observed to produce a new hydrogel film coated on its swollen surface. Here, inspired by this phenomenon, we theoretically formulate the dynamics of isotropic-to-nematic ($I\text{−}N$) phase transition caused by swelling a hydrogel subs…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 054701] Published Fri Nov 18, 2022

Topological defects are increasingly being identified in various biological systems, where their characteristic flow fields and stress patterns are associated with continuous active stress generation by biological entities. Here, using numerical simulations of continuum fluctuating nematohydrodynami…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044706] Published Fri Oct 28, 2022

Elementary cellular automata provide one of the simplest ways to generally describe the phenomena of pattern formation. However, they are considered too simple to be able to describe in detail the more complex phenomena occurring in real experimental systems. In this article, we demonstrate the an a…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044705] Published Tue Oct 25, 2022

Molecular interactions between liquid crystals (LCs) and reactive mesogens (RMs) at temperatures across the phase transition regions were comprehensively studied during photopolymerization-induced phase separation (PPIPS) beginning with raw mixtures until the formation of polymer network liquid crys…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044704] Published Thu Oct 20, 2022

We describe investigations on the influence of the flexible spacer parity and length of the guest photoactive liquid-crystalline dimers in guest-host mixtures exhibiting photoinduced transitions involving isotropic ($I$), cholesteric ($N^{*}$), and twist grain boundary smectic-$C^{*}$ (TGB$C^{*}$) phases. Despite a …

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044702] Published Mon Oct 17, 2022

Chromonic liquid crystals constitute a novel lyotropic phase, whose elastic properties have so far been modeled within the classical Oseen-Frank theory, provided that the twist constant is assumed to be considerably smaller than the saddle-splay constant, in violation of one Ericksen inequality. Thi…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044703] Published Mon Oct 17, 2022

The biaxial phase in nematic liquid crystals has been elusive for several decades after its prediction in the 1970s. A recent experimental breakthrough was achieved by Liu et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 113, 10479 (2016)] in a liquid-crystalline medium with magnetic nanoparticles. They exploited…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 044701] Published Fri Oct 14, 2022

One of the unusual liquid crystalline phases exhibited by some compounds with bent-core (BC) molecules is designated as $\mathrm{Sm}A{P}_R$, in which transverse polarization (P) of smectic layers with upright molecules has a random orientational distribution. Most of such compounds undergo a transition to the $\mathrm{Sm}A{\dots }_{}$

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 034702] Published Mon Sep 12, 2022

Specific features of two-dimensional nematodynamics give rise to shortfalls of the tensor representation of the nematic order parameter commonly used in computations, especially in theory of active matter. The alternative representation in terms of the vector order parameter follows with small adjus…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 034701] Published Tue Sep 06, 2022

The paper presents a theoretical description of the light-induced nematic liquid crystal reorientation in a cell with gold nanoparticles deposited on the surface of one of bounding substrates. It is shown that the surface plasmon resonance in the nanoparticles significantly affects the threshold of …

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024706] Published Thu Aug 18, 2022

The structure of the nematic (cholesteric) drops that form at the clearing temperature of a mixture of the bent-core molecule CB7CB and the rodlike molecule 8CB doped with a surfactant is optically determined. Using experimental observations and numerical simulations, it is demonstrated that the dir…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024705] Published Tue Aug 16, 2022

We investigate the ground-state configurations of two-dimensional liquid crystals with $p$-fold rotational symmetry ($p$-atics) on fixed curved surfaces. We focus on the intrinsic geometry and show that isothermal coordinates are particularly convenient as they explicitly encode a geometric contribution…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024704] Published Fri Aug 12, 2022

The structural and magneto- and electro-optical properties of a self-organized ensemble of nematic domains formed on a polycarbonate film in the presence of a residual solvent are studied. The film covered one of the plane-parallel glass plates of a liquid crystal cell. The magnetic field stabilizin…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024703] Published Tue Aug 09, 2022

We formulate a comprehensive hydrodynamic theory of two-dimensional liquid crystals with generic $p$-fold rotational symmetry, also known as $p$-atics, of which nematics $(p=2)$ and hexatics $(p=6)$ are the two best known examples. Previous hydrodynamic theories of $p$-atics are characterized by continuous $\mathrm{O}(\mathrm{\dots }$

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024701] Published Fri Aug 05, 2022

Unique electro-optical properties of the oblique helicoidal cholesteric (${\mathrm{Ch}}_{\mathrm{OH}}$) stem from its heliconical director structure. An applied electric field preserves the single-harmonic modulation of the director while tuning the ${\mathrm{Ch}}_{\mathrm{OH}}$ period and the corresponding Bragg-peak wavelength within a broad spec…

[Phys. Rev. E 106, 024702] Published Thu Aug 04, 2022