Liquid-Crystal Phase Transitions Induced by Microtextured Substrates

Liquid crystal orientation transition on microtextured substrates.

A uniform alignment of liquid crystal (LC) with finite pretilt was observed on microtextured substrates that were lithographically fabricated with alternating horizontal and vertical corrugations. As the period of alternation was decreased toward 0.8 microm, the nematic LC alignment on these substrates changed from inhomogeneous in plane, copying the substrate corrugations, to a uniform configu...

Gravity-induced liquid crystal phase transitions of colloidal platelets.

The influence of gravity on a suspension of sterically stabilized colloidal gibbsite platelets is studied. An initially isotropic-nematic biphasic sample of such a suspension develops a columnar phase on the bottom on prolonged standing. This phenomenon is described using a simple osmotic compression model. We performed Monte Carlo simulations of cut spheres with aspect ratio L/D=1/15 and took ...

Fluctuations and Liquid Crystal Phase Transitions

In this solicited contribution for the Handbook of Liquid Crystals, edited by G. W. Gray, J. W. Goodby and D. Demus, I summarize the large number of research results where fluctuations play an important role in liquid crystal phase transitions.

Crystal-crystal transitions: Mediated by a liquid.

Phase transitions induced by nanoconfinement in liquid water.

We present results from molecular dynamics simulations of water confined by two parallel atomically detailed hydrophobic walls. Simulations are performed at T = 300 K and wall-wall separation d = 0.6-1.6 nm. At 0.7 < or = d < or = 0.9 nm, a first order transition occurs between a bilayer liquid (BL) and a trilayer heterogeneous fluid (THF) as water density increases. The THF is characterized by...