A Smooth Interface Method for Simulating Liquid Crystal Colloid Dispersions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel mesoscopic simulation method for liquid crystal colloid dispersions, enabling efficient modeling of many-body interactions without hydrodynamics, demonstrated through aggregation in nematic and smectic-C* solvents.

Contribution

It presents a new simulation approach that efficiently captures many-body interactions in liquid crystal colloid dispersions at the mesoscopic scale.

Findings

Demonstrated aggregation behavior in 2D nematic and smectic-C* solvents

Method neglects hydrodynamic effects, with plans to include them later

Enables first-principle simulations of complex colloid dispersions

Abstract

A new method is presented for mesoscopic simulations of particle dispersions in liquid crystal solvents. It allows efficient first-principle simulations of the dispersions involving many particles with many-body interactions mediated by the solvents. Demonstrations have been performed for the aggregation of colloid dispersions in two-dimensional nematic and smectic-C* solvents neglecting hydrodynamic effects, which will be taken into account in the near future.