Abstract
When dispersed in thermotropic nematic liquid crystal oils, surfactant-ladden aqueous droplets often lead to the formation of a equatorial ring disclination in the nearby nematic matrix as a result of a balance between elasticity and interfacial energy. In this experimental work, the aqueous phase contains an extract of cytoskeletal proteins that self-assemble into an active quasi-two-dimensional shell featuring self-sustained periodic flows. The ensuing hydrodynamic coupling drives the surrounding liquid crystal and triggers oscillations in the disclinations. We describe the dynamic modes of the disclinations under different driving conditions, and explore their pathway to collapse under flow conditions.
Highlights
Nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) are liquids whose molecules organize with long-range orientational order, which is locally characterized by a director field, n [1]
We provide a thorough revision of the different dynamic modes of SR driven by the underlying active nematic (AN) shell, the possible dynamic states, which involve both synchronous and asynchronous oscillations, and the different pathways that lead to the collapse of the SR into a dipolar point-like defect configuration
The active system we used consisted of an active gel formed by an aqueous suspension of tubulin microtubules, dimeric kinesin molecular motors, and the non-adsorbing depleting agent polyethylene glycol (PEG), which concentrates the microtubules into bundles, hundreds of micrometers long [25]
Summary
Nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) are liquids whose molecules organize with long-range orientational order, which is locally characterized by a director field, n [1]. A particular case of frustrated geometries in NLCs is obtained by preparing nematic colloidal suspensions [4, 5] These are systems in which the ordered mesophase, which is typically oriented in a homogeneous fashion by means of the anchoring conditions on bounding plates (far field), is disrupted by the presence of sub-millimeter solid [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13] or liquid [14,15,16] inclusions. With the support of numerical simulations, our earlier study revealed a feedback mechanism between the orientation of the SR, determined by the nematic far field, and the spatial arrangement of the AN shell, which led to sustained periodic oscillations of the SR Such regimes were not the norm in the experiments, and often driven SR became unstable and collapsed into a dipolar configuration. We focus on the long term behavior of the dynamic SR
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