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Around the corner: Colloidal assembly and wiring in groovy nematic cells

2016; American Physical Society; Volume: 93; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physreve.93.032705

2470-0061

Yimin Luo, Francesca Serra, Daniel A. Beller, Mohamed Amine Gharbi, Ningwei Li, Shu Yang, Randall D. Kamien, Kathleen J. Stebe,

Advanced Materials and Mechanics

We study colloids suspended in nematic liquid crystal in grooves with homeotropic anchoring. We observe ``eyelashes'', topological dipole chains that follow the local, curved director field. These beget wires that connect the groove corners to topographical features on the cell lid to yield oriented, curvilinear colloidal wires spanning the cell, formed in a nonsingular director field. As the groove aspect ratio changes, we find different ground states and corroborate our observation with numerics. Our results rely upon on the scale of topographical features, the sharpness of edges, and the colloid-sourced distortions; all these elements can be exploited to guide the formation of reconfigurable structures in nematics.