2000/05/03 by Valerie J. Anderson, V. J. Anderson, Eugene M. Terentjev +11
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior #Material Dynamics and Properties #Plant and animal studies #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0005079
Latex 2e (EPJ style) EPS figures included (poor quality to comply with space limitations)
arxiv created 2000/05/03 · openalex publication_date 2000/05/03 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the phase ordering colloids suspended in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal below the clearing point Tni and the resulting aggregated structure. Small (150nm) PMMA particles are dispersed in a classical liquid crystal matrix, 5CB or MBBA. With the help of confocal microscopy we show that small colloid particles densely aggregate on thin interfaces surrounding large volumes of clean nematic liquid, thus forming an open cellular structure, with the characteristic size of 10-100 micron inversely proportional to the colloid concentration. A simple theoretical model, based on the Landau mean-field treatment, is developed to describe the continuous phase separation and the mechanism of cellular structure formation.