Defect-influenced particle advection in highly confined liquid crystal flows

Lesniewska, Magdalena and Mottram, Nigel and Henrich, Oliver (2024) Defect-influenced particle advection in highly confined liquid crystal flows. Soft Matter, 20 (10). pp. 2218-2231. ISSN 1744-6848 (https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SM01297B)

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Abstract

We study the morphology of the Saturn ring defect and director structure around a colloidal particle with normal anchoring conditions and within the flow of the nematic host phase through a rectangular duct of comparable size to the particle. The changes in the defect structures and director profile influence the advection behaviour of the particle, which we compare to that in a simple Newtonian host phase. These effects lead to a non-monotonous dependence of the differential velocity of particle and fluid, also known as retardation ratio, on the Ericksen number.

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