Ring disclination line

Fig. 4.17 a Colloidal GNPs (100 rnn diameter) trapped into the Saturn ring disclination line surrounding a large spherical silica particle (1 mm diameter) suspended in a thermotropic N LC host, b The calculated stable colloidal ring superstructure for this combination of colloids (inset shows a schematic of the corresponding electrical circuit) [113]. Copyright from American Physical Society 2008... 

For example, LC-organized split ring resonators is presented in Fig. 4.17 [113], where GNPs were trapped in disclination lines surroimding micron sized silica beads that were organized into an array by the nematic continuum phase. There were other developed interesting types of self-assembled nanostructures and it has been claimed that the next frontier toward commercialization was bringing the fabrication cost down with nanochemistry-based bottom-up self-assembly approaches [114]. 

In this section we consider the interaction between a particle and a wall. We first present the results from the theory. Figure 1.2.2 shows the director profile and scalar order parameter maps for a particle of radius R = 0.36 located at the surface of a wall. Comparing these maps with those for a particle further away, (Fig. 1.2.2 ), we observe that the disclination line is no longer at the equatorial plane, but is shifted towards the wall. Similar deviations of the position of the ring are observed in the Monte Carlo simulations. 

Fig. 1. Schematic diagrams of the director field distortions black lines) around particles in an aligned nematic liquid crystal. For a normal anchoring of the liquid crystal molecules at the surface of the particles, there are two possible configurations, a Dipole configuration with a companion point defect (indicated by an arrow) located in the immediate vicinity of the particle, b Quadrupolar Saturn-ring configuration with a disclination ring surrounding the particle at the equator...

---