Explicit demonstration of geometric frustration in chiral liquid crystals

Cheng, Ling; Selinger, Jonathan V.

doi:10.1039/d2sm01420c

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Recent theoretical reports indicate that strict planar confinement of 2D ChLCs hinders the development of double twist, leading to the formation of a novel chiral structure. 64…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent theoretical reports indicate that strict planar confinement of 2D ChLCs hinders the development of double twist, leading to the formation of a novel chiral structure. 64 In Section 2 we outline the details of the phenomenological model adopted here, as well as the numerical methods used to find equilibrium configurations. Section 3 introduces our results and discussion by presenting the underlying free energy surface as a function of chirality and cavity size.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Curvature and confinement effects on chiral liquid crystal morphologies

et al. 2023

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“…Recent theoretical reports indicate that strict planar confinement of 2D ChLCs hinders the development of double twist, leading to the formation of a novel chiral structure. 64…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curvature and confinement effects on chiral liquid crystal morphologies

et al. 2023

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An Elastic Quartic Twist Theory for Chromonic Liquid Crystals

Paparini

Virga

2023

J Elast

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Chromonic liquid crystals are lyotropic materials which are attracting growing interest for their adaptability to living systems. To describe their elastic properties, the classical Oseen-Frank theory requires anomalously small twist constants and (comparatively) large saddle-splay constants, so large as to violate one of Ericksen’s inequalities, which guarantee that the Oseen-Frank stored-energy density is bounded below. While such a violation does not prevent the existence and stability of equilibrium distortions in problems with fixed geometric confinement, the study of free-boundary problems for droplets has revealed a number of paradoxical consequences. Minimizing sequences driving the total energy to negative infinity have been constructed by employing ever growing needle-shaped tactoids incorporating a diverging twist (Paparini and Virga in Phys. Rev. E 106: 044703, 2022). To overcome these difficulties, we propose here a novel elastic theory that extends for chromonics the classical Oseen-Frank stored energy by adding a quartic twist term. We show that the total energy of droplets is bounded below in the quartic twist theory, so that the known paradoxes are ruled out. The quartic term introduces a phenomenological length "Equation missing" in the theory; this affects the equilibrium of chromonics confined within capillary tubes. Use of published experimental data allows us to estimate "Equation missing".

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