We report flexoelectric liquid crystal displays based on polymer-stabilized cholesteric liquid crystals with both uniform lying helix (PSULH) and vertical standing helix (PSVSH) modes. A method to enhance the flexoelectric switching of the CLC mixture is achieved by mixing nematic liquid crystal (NLC) constituents with the addition of a giant flexoelastic coefficient bimesogenic LC dimer into a...

Interfacial strain gradients in oxide epitaxial thin films provide an interesting opportunity to study flexoelectric effects and their potential applications. Oxide epitaxial thin films can exhibit giant and tunable flexoelectric effects, which are six or seven orders of magnitude larger than those in conventional bulk solids. The strain gradient in an oxide epitaxial thin film can generate an ...

We develop a lattice model for the splay flexoelectric effect in nematic liquid crystals. In this model, each lattice site has a spin representing the local molecular orientation, and the interaction between neighboring spins represents pear-shaped molecules with shape polarity. We perform Monte Carlo simulations and mean-field calculations to find the behavior as a function of interaction para...

Recent developments in flexoelectricity, especially in nanostructures, have lead to several interesting notions such as piezoelectric materials without using piezoelectric materials and enhanced energy harvesting at the nanoscale, among others. In the biological context also, membrane flexoelectricity has been hypothesized to play an important role, e.g., biological mechanotransduction and hear...

Liquid crystal flexoelectric actuation uses an imposed electric field to create membrane bending and it is used by the Outer Hair Cells (OHC) located in the inner ear, whose role is to amplify sound through generation of mechanical power. Oscillations in the OHC membranes create periodic viscoelastic flows in the contacting fluid media. A key objective of this work on flexoelectric actuation re...

Flexoelectric polarization, which is caused by symmetry breaking in a distortion of material, was investigated liquid crystalline elastomers composed wedge-shaped mesogens prepared cross-linking under horseshoe-shaped deformation. X-ray diffractometry suggested that splay along the depth direction induced pseudo-isotropic phase. While almost no electric charge observed smectic A phase, an polar...

We report the first attempt to prepare a flexoelectric nanogenerator consisting of direct-grown piezoelectrics on multi-walled carbon nanotubes (mwCNT). Direct-grown piezoelectrics on mwCNTs are formed by a stirring and heating method using a Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT)-mwCNT precursor solution. We studied the unit cell mismatch and strain distribution of epitaxial PZT nanoparticles, and found tha...