Positionally ordered liquid crystals on curved manifolds

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Hartmut Löwen; Professor Dr. Axel Voigt
• Subject Area: Statistical Physics, Nonlinear Dynamics, Complex Systems, Soft and Fluid Matter, Biological Physics ; Mathematics
• Term: from 2015 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280671903

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

Typically liquid crystals exhibit a rich bulk phase diagram with various mesophases involving both positional and orientational order. Their bulk equilibrium phase behaviour has been extensively studied in flat space by statistical theories and computer simulation. Liquid crystals have also been confined in various ways in curved containers and on manifolds. While the topology of defects has been widely studied for confined nematic layers, much less is known regarding the morphology for confined or constrained positionally ordered phases (such as smectic and crystalline phases). In this project, we have used a combination of the density functional approach, phase-field crystal approach and particle-resolved computer simulations to tackle positionally ordered liquid crystalline phases with curved constraints and boundaries in two and three spatial dimensions. Both chiral and achiral particle shapes were considered. We also explored active systems within the phase-field crystal approach and characterized the defect dynamics in these nonequilibrium systems.

Publications

• Dynamical Crystallites of Active Chiral Particles. Physical Review Letters, 125(21).
  Huang, Zhi-Feng; Menzel, Andreas M. & Löwen, Hartmut
  
• Liquid crystals on deformable surfaces. Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 476(2241).
  Nitschke, Ingo; Reuther, Sebastian & Voigt, Axel
  
• Properties of surface Landau–de GennesQ-tensor models. Soft Matter, 16(16), 4032-4042.
  Nestler, Michael; Nitschke, Ingo; Löwen, Hartmut & Voigt, Axel
  
• Particle-resolved topological defects of smectic colloidal liquid crystals in extreme confinement. Nature Communications, 12(1).
  Wittmann, René; Cortes, Louis B. G.; Löwen, Hartmut & Aarts, Dirk G. A. L.
  
• Topology of Orientational Defects in Confined Smectic Liquid Crystals. Physical Review Letters, 127(19).
  Monderkamp, Paul A.; Wittmann, René; Cortes, Louis B. G.; Aarts, Dirk G. A. L.; Smallenburg, Frank & Löwen, Hartmut
  
• Defect dynamics in active smectics induced by confining geometry and topology. Communications Physics, 5(1).
  Huang, Zhi-Feng; Löwen, Hartmut & Voigt, Axel
  
• Topological fine structure of smectic grain boundaries and tetratic disclination lines within three-dimensional smectic liquid crystals. Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 24(26), 15691-15704.
  Monderkamp, Paul A.; Wittmann, René; te Vrugt, Michael; Voigt, Axel; Wittkowski, Raphael & Löwen, Hartmut
  
• Network topology of interlocked chiral particles. The Journal of Chemical Physics, 158(16).
  Monderkamp, Paul A.; Windisch, Rika S.; Wittmann, René & Löwen, Hartmut
  
• Active smectics on a sphere. Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 36(18), 185001.
  Nestler, Michael; Praetorius, Simon; Huang, Zhi-Feng; Löwen, Hartmut & Voigt, Axel