Synthetic materials capable of responses to external or internal stimuli represent one of the
most exciting and emerging areas of scientific interest and unexplored commercial …

Revolutionary developments in the fabrication of nanosized particles have created
enormous expectations in the last few years for the use of such materials in areas such as …

The ability to generate regular spatial arrangements of particles is an important
technological and fundamental aspect of colloidal science. We showed that colloidal …

This pedagogical overview of liquid crystals is based on lectures for postgraduate students
given at the International Max Planck Research School “Modeling of Soft Matter”. I am …

Phenomenological Landau–de Gennes modelling based on the free energy of nematic
liquid crystal colloids is reviewed. Nematic phase, gradient of order, and surface anchoring …

Besides nanostructured materials, individual particles are key elements for nanosciences.
The structuring properties of liquid crystals (LCs) are appealing to assemble them, to …

We discuss qualitative and quantitative aspects of the effective interactions between
micrometer-sized colloids of different types trapped at fluid interfaces, with a particular …

Using laser tweezers, we study colloidal interactions of solid microspheres in the nematic
bulk caused by elastic distortions around the particles with tangential surface anchoring. The …

Colloidal particles in a liquid crystal (LC) behave very differently from their counterparts in
isotropic fluids. Elastic nature of the orientational order and surface anchoring of the director …

The formation of a large-area ordered structure by organic molecular soft building blocks is
one of the most exciting interdisciplinary research areas in current materials science and …