New Paper “Competition of Elasticity and Flexoelectricity for Bistable Alignment of Nematics on Patterned Substrates” now in print

We’re delighted to announce that our new paper has been published as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review E. This paper is the first fruit of our collaboration with James Adler of the Mathematics department here at Tufts. James is an expert in numerical methods, which we’ve brought to bear on a difficult physics problem.

The paper examines, like some of our other papers, how surfaces that have been chemically patterned can align liquid crystals to make new types of display or electronic paper. The new physics here is to study the role of flexoelectricity—an interaction between the electric field and the curvature of the liquid crystal—in causing alignment.