Selfassembly of droplets in a nematic liquid crystal

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Self-assembly of droplets in a nematic liquid
crystal

• Chunfeng Zhou
• Siddharth Khullar
• Pengtao Yue
• James J. Feng

IAM retreat April 13th, 2007
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Self-assembly in nematic matrix
Nazarenko et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. (2001)
Loudet et al. Nature (2000)
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Outline

• Introduction to the liquid crystals
• Simulation pairwise interactions
• Simulation self-assembly.

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Nematic liquid crystal bulk distortions
, n1
if
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How particles behave when they are dispersed in a
nematic liquid crystal?
Boojums
Saturn ring disclination
Hyperbolic hedgehog