期刊
Soft Matter
卷 12, 期 46, 页码 9280-9288出版社
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c6sm01748g
关键词
-
类别
资金
- French National Research Agency [13-JS08-0006-01]
- Institut Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (Laboratoire d'excellence, Investissements d'avenir) [ANR-10-IDEX 0001-02 PSL, ANR-10-EQPX-31]
- Slovenian Research Agency [P1-0099, Z1-6725]
We investigate experimentally and numerically the defect configurations emerging when a cholesteric liquid crystal is confined to a spherical shell. We uncover a rich scenario of defect configurations, some of them non-existent in nematic shells, where new types of defects are stabilized by the helical ordering of the liquid crystal. In contrast to nematic shells, here defects are not simple singular points or lines, but have a large structured core. Specifically, we observe five different types of cholesteric shells. We study the statistical distribution of the different types of shells as a function of the two relevant geometrical dimensionless parameters of the system. By playing with these parameters, we are able to induce transitions between different types of shells. These transitions involve interesting topological transformations in which the defects recombine to form new structures. Surprisingly, the defects do not approach each other by taking the shorter distance route (geodesic), but by following intricate paths.
作者
我是这篇论文的作者
点击您的名字以认领此论文并将其添加到您的个人资料中。
推荐
暂无数据