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Updated: Jan 27, 2026

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
Published on: October 31, 2019
Connectivity, Not Density, Dictates Percolation in Nematic Liquid Crystals of Slender Nanoparticles
Shari P Finner1, Tanja Schilling2, Paul van der Schoot1,3
1Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 3500 MB Eindhoven, Netherlands.
Abstract:
We show by means of continuum theory and simulations that geometric percolation in uniaxial nematics of hard slender particles is fundamentally different from that in isotropic dispersions. In the nematic, percolation depends only very weakly on the density and is, in essence, determined by a distance criterion that defines connectivity. This unexpected finding has its roots in the nontrivial coupling between the density and the degree of orientational order that dictate the mean number of particle contacts. Clusters in the nematic are much longer than wide, suggesting the use of nematics for nanocomposites with strongly anisotropic transport properties.
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