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Updated: Jul 9, 2025
06:26
Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
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Geometry-structure models for liquid crystal interfaces, drops and membranes: wrinkling, shape selection and
Ziheng Wang1, Phillip Servio1, Alejandro D Rey1
1Department of Chemical Engineering, McGill University, 3610 University Street, Montréal, Québec, H3A 2B2, Canada. alejandro.rey@mcgill.ca.
Soft Matter
|November 30, 2023
Summary
This study introduces a new shape-curvedness framework for modeling anisotropic soft matter, offering deeper insights into liquid crystal interfaces, drops, and membranes. The approach enhances understanding of pattern formation and biological cell shapes.
Area of Science:
- Soft Matter Physics
- Liquid Crystals
- Biophysics
- Computational Geometry
Background:
- Traditional models for soft matter geometry use dimensional curvatures that conflate shape and curvedness.
- Anisotropic soft matter, including liquid crystal interfaces, drops, and membranes, exhibits complex static and dynamic behaviors.
- Existing theoretical and simulation literature often lacks a unified framework for analyzing these phenomena.
Purpose of the Study:
- To present a novel decoupled shape-curvedness framework for analyzing anisotropic soft matter.
- To demonstrate the framework's application to liquid crystal interfaces, drops, and membranes.
- To provide deeper quantitative insights into static and dynamic pattern formation compared to traditional methods.
Main Methods:
- Application of a novel decoupled shape-curvedness framework to soft matter phenomena.
- Analysis of static wrinkling and shape selection in liquid crystal interfaces and membranes.
- Modeling of dissipative dynamics and shape evolution in membranes using irreversible thermodynamics.
- Development of computational methods for solving shape equations and analyzing shape-curvedness evolution.
Main Results:
- Corrugations in liquid crystal interfaces arise from orientation distortions, with scaling laws dependent on energy ratios.
- Liquid crystal-encapsulated drops exhibit diverse shapes (multilobal, tactoidal, serrated) influenced by anchoring, tension, and bending.
- A dissipative shape evolution model explains kinetic stability of cylinders and identifies spheres/saddles as attractors, with implications for outer hair cells.
Conclusions:
- The decoupled shape-curvedness framework offers superior quantitative insights into soft matter phenomena.
- The methodology successfully models complex shape transitions and pattern formation in liquid crystal systems.
- This approach advances the understanding of biological cell shapes and dynamics, particularly outer hair cells.
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