Structure Formation of Colloids in Nematic Liquid Crystals

Abstract

We investigated the behaviour of colloidal particles suspended in nematic liquid crystals. These colloidal particles interact through elastic deformation of the nematic director field which can result in nontrivial collective behavior, leading to the formation of spatially modulated structures. In this paper, the formation of lattice structures is described both by computer simulations and by analytical theory. Effective interactions of the pairs of spherical macroparticles suspended in nematic liquid crystals have been suggested by many authors. Using these pairwise interactions, spatial structures are obtained by means of dynamic simulations. We have suggested a number of possible structures, which may be formed in multi-macroparticle systems. Regions of temperatures and concentrations are determined in which such a structure might appear.

Aggregation of Nanoparticles in a Nematic Liquid Crystal

“…Mechanical and optical properties of this matter are defined, first of all, by the collective behavior of this system [3]. Depending on the size and anchoring energies, the particles form chains [4][5][6], anisotropic clusters [7], cellular structures [8,9], and periodic structures [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The interaction between particles in such systems resulting in the formation of structures crucially depends on the sizes of particles [18][19][20] and the thickness of a liquid crystal cell [21].…”