Self-assembled architectures of soft matter have fascinated scientists for centuries due to
their unique physical properties originated from controllable orientational and/or positional …

Achieving tunable physical properties is currently one of the most exciting research topics. In
order to realize this goal, a medium that is responsive to external stimuli and can undergo a …

A phenomenological free energy model is proposed to describe the behavior of smectic
liquid crystals, an intermediate phase that exhibits orientational order and layering at the …

New collective optical properties have emerged recently from organized and oriented arrays
of closely packed semiconducting and metallic nanoparticles (NPs). However, it is still …

Matter self-assembling into layers generates unique properties, including structures of
stacked surfaces, directed transport, and compact area maximization that can be highly …

Composed of microscopic layers that stack along one direction while maintaining fluid-like
positional disorder within layers, smectics are excellent systems for exploring topology …

We investigate experimentally the formation of focal conic domains of the ferroelectric phase
of a liquid crystal, chiral smectic C (Sm C*), in the meniscus geometry. The meniscus …

Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While the smectic layers are
typically straight, forming a lamellar pattern in bulk, external confinement may drastically …

Liquid crystals can self-organize into a layered smectic phase. While in bulk the smectic
layers are typically straight forming a lamellar pattern, external confinement may drastically …

Guiding and dynamically modulating topological defects are critical challenges in defect
engineering of liquid crystals. Here, we employ molecular dynamics simulations to …