Around the corner: Colloidal assembly and wiring in groovy nematic cells

Yimin Luo, Francesca Serra, Daniel A. Beller, Mohamed A. Gharbi, Ningwei Li, Shu Yang, Randall D. Kamien, and Kathleen J. Stebe
Phys. Rev. E 93, 032705 – Published 25 March 2016
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Abstract

We study colloids suspended in nematic liquid crystal in grooves with homeotropic anchoring. We observe “eyelashes”, topological dipole chains that follow the local, curved director field. These beget wires that connect the groove corners to topographical features on the cell lid to yield oriented, curvilinear colloidal wires spanning the cell, formed in a nonsingular director field. As the groove aspect ratio changes, we find different ground states and corroborate our observation with numerics. Our results rely upon on the scale of topographical features, the sharpness of edges, and the colloid-sourced distortions; all these elements can be exploited to guide the formation of reconfigurable structures in nematics.

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  • Received 5 October 2015
  • Revised 20 December 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.032705

©2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

  1. Physical Systems
Polymers & Soft Matter

Authors & Affiliations

Yimin Luo1, Francesca Serra1, Daniel A. Beller1,2, Mohamed A. Gharbi1,3, Ningwei Li1, Shu Yang1, Randall D. Kamien1, and Kathleen J. Stebe1,*

  • 1Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
  • 2School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • 3Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

  • *kstebe@seas.upenn.edu

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Issue

Vol. 93, Iss. 3 — March 2016

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