Liquid crystals (LCs) are key functional materials that are broadly adopted in various fields
due to their stimuli‐responsiveness. Recently, LCs with hierarchical architectures have …

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 …

Molecular ordering and the defect structures of a material play essential roles in its function
and performance. Controlling molecular alignment and topological defects has been a …

Smectic liquid crystals exhibit a remarkable ability to self-organize into a variety of textures,
patterns, and arrays extending over large surface areas with microscale periodicity. These …

Dynamics of small particles, both living and inanimate, has fascinated scientists for
centuries. Learning how to control it could open technological opportunities in the …

Using an ac calorimetry technique we measured the specific heat at the nematic-isotropic,
smectic-A–nematic, and smectic-A–isotropic phase transitions, for the alkylcyanobiphenyl …

Recently, it has been reported that liquid crystal (LC) defects can be used to create highly
periodic templates by controlling the surface anchoring and the elastic properties of LC …

Control of cells behavior through topography of substrates is an important theme in
biomedical applications. Among many materials used as substrates, polymers show …

We demonstrate that the layer structure and elasticity stabilize dispersions of colloidal
nanoparticles in smectic liquid crystals. We use surface plasmon resonance spectra of gold …

A smectic liquid crystal (LC) containing a rigid biphenyl group and semifluorinated chains
exhibits a high density of toric focal conic domains (TFCDs) arranged in an ordered array …