Theory and simulation of objects in liquid crystals

Abstract

Colloidal particles with anisotropic interactions are excellent candidates for synthetic building blocks of self-assembled materials with desirable properties, such as a photonic band-gap or swimming ability, at the nano- or micro-scale. The anisotropic nature of liquid crystals (LCs) makes them an ideal candidate to generate non-spherically symmetric interactions between immersed colloidal particles. Here, we review the progress on the theory and simulation of such systems.