Manipulating molecular order in nematic liquid crystal capillary bridgesviasurfactant adsorption: guiding principles from dissipative particle dynamics simulations

Abstract

Effect of surfactant tail length on the orientation of liquid crystals is investigated with dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulations.

Effects of droplet size and surfactants on anchoring in liquid crystal nanodroplets

“…The molecular models utilized here are taken from our previous work. 27 The simulations are conducted in a coarse-grained framework. For example, one water bead (W) represents five water molecules.…”

“…We quantified the effect of amphiphiles morphological differences on the LC anchoring. 27 The results showed that varying the number of hydrophilic coils and hydrophobic rods in such a model surfactant can largely affect LCs' anchoring alongside surfactant tail-LC interactions. Those results depend on the internal elasticity, which tends to preferentially align the director along the axis of the cylinder.…”

Nanoparticles shape-specific emergent behaviour on liquid crystal droplets

“…Details regarding the models implemented for describing water and LC mesogens are reported elsewhere. 31,32 In short, in our coarse-grained representation, one water 'bead', indicated with W in what follows, represents 5 water molecules (i.e., the degree of coarse graining was set equal to 5). The LC mesogens are rod-like molecules composed of 6 beads connected with a harmonic spring.…”

“…In our implementation, r 0 = 0.6, θ 0 = 180°, k bond = 100k B T/r 2 , and k angle = 100k B T. These parameters yield rather rigid LC molecules, whose phase diagram in the bulk was described elsewhere. 31…”

“…Following conventional simulation approaches, the order of LC molecules was quantified by the orientational order parameter (S). As we discussed in our previous studies, 31,32 S is calculated by the ensemble average of the traceless secondrank tensor (Q) for each molecule that is considered an integral part of a LC nano-droplet:…”