back                            Фізичні семінари по інтернету

Доповіді відомих фізиків з усього світу

 

Video recording of the seminar

Seminar poster

December 9 (Wednesday), 2015

17:00

 

Oleg Lavrentovich

Kent State University, OH, USA

Statics and dynamics of colloidal particles in liquid crystals

Behavior of small particles in fluids have fascinated scientist for centuries.  Phenomena such as Brownian motion, sedimentation, and electrophoresis continue to inspire cutting-edge research and innovation.  The fluid in which the colloidal particles move is typically isotropic, such as water or a polymer solution.  When the particles are placed in an anisotropic fluid, a liquid crystal, their behavior changes, because of the appearance of long-range elastic interactions [1].  Recently, our group started to explore the dynamics of colloids in liquid crystal environment [2].  The study reveals that liquid crystals change dramatically both the static and dynamic behavior of colloids, enabling levitation of particles, anomalous Brownian diffusion regimes [2], and new mechanisms of eletrokinetics [3,4].  Adding an active component to a liquid crystal, such as moving bacteria, allows one to trace a cascade of transitions from equilibrium to non-equilibrium orientational patterns [5].  The new phenomena are rooted in anisotropy of the liquid crystal properties, such as surface tension and elasticity, electric conductivity and dielectric permittivity [6,7].

1          P. Poulin, H. Stark, T.C. Lubensky, and D.A. Weitz, Science 275, 1770 (1997).

2          O.D. Lavrentovich, Soft Matter 10, 1264 (2014).

3          T. Turiv, I. Lazo, A. Brodin, B.I. Lev, V. Reiffenrath, V.G. Nazarenko, and O.D. Lavrentovich, Science 342, 1351 (2013).

4          O.D. Lavrentovich, I. Lazo and O.P. Pishnyak, Nature 467, 947 (2010).

5          I. Lazo, C. Peng, J. Xiang, S.V. Shiyanovskii, and O.D. Lavrentovich, Nature Communications 5, 5033 (2014).

6          S. Zhou, A. Sokolov, O.D. Lavrentovich and I.S. Aranson, PNAS 111, 1265 (2014).

7          A. Sokolov, S. Zhou, O.D. Lavrentovich, and I.S. Aranson, Phys. Rev. E 91, 013009 (2015)

8          C. Peng, Y. Guo, C. Conklin, J. Vinals, S.V. Shiyanovskii, Q.H. Wei, and O.D. Lavrentovich, Phys. Rev. E 92, 052502 (2015).

 

 

About the speaker

Oleg D. Lavrentovich is a Trustees Research Professor at the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University. He received his Ph.D. (1984) and Doctor of Science (1990) degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1992 he joined the Liquid Crystal Institute as a Senior Research Fellow. He served as the director of institute in 2003-2011. Lavrentovich held visiting appointments at the University P. et M. Curie, University Denis Diderot in France and other universities. He is the editor of Liquid Crystals Reviews (Taylor & Francis), member of the Editorial Boards of Liquid Crystals, Condensed Matter Physics, Ukrainian Journal of Physics and Advisor of the Kent State University SPIE Student Chapter.