Colloidal particles at chiral liquid crystal interfaces

Colloidal particles at liquid interfaces.

Colloidal particles in liquid crystal films and at interfaces

This mini-review discusses the recent contribution of theoretical and computational physics as well as experimental efforts to the understanding of the behavior of colloidal particles in confined geometries and at liquid crystalline interfaces. Theoretical approaches used to study trapping, longand short-range interactions, and assembly of solid particles and liquid inclusions are outlined. As ...

Orientational defects near colloidal particles in a nematic liquid crystal.

We study the interaction between a surface-anchoring colloidal particle and a liquid-crystalline host, and in particular the formation of orientational defects near the particle. A mean-field theory based on the nonlocal Marrucci-Greco nematic potential is used to represent molecular interactions in an inhomogeneous orientational field. An evolution equation for the molecular configuration tens...

A Microfluidic Approach to Chemically Driven Assembly of Colloidal Particles at Gas-Liquid Interfaces

Bubbles are everyday objects and easy to make? Not so, when one is trying to generate and maintain tiny bubbles with accurately defined volumes in the nanoliter range or even smaller. This follows from the fact that the gas/liquid interface (the bubble boundary) is energetically expensive. As a consequence, this interface has a tension g and the bubble has a spherical shape (with radius R), whi...

Influence of line tension on spherical colloidal particles at liquid-vapor interfaces.

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) imaging of isolated submicron dodecyltrichlorosilane coated silica spheres, immobilized at the liquid polystyrene- (PS-) air interface at the PS glass transition temperature, T(g), allows for determination of the contact angle θ versus particle radius R. At T(g), all θ versus R measurements are well described by the modified Young's equation for a line tension τ = ...