title: Coarse-grained treatment of the self-assembly of colloids suspended in a nematic host phase.
abstract: The complex interplay of molecular scale effects, nonlinearities in the orientational field and long-range elastic forces makes liquid-crystal physics very challenging. A consistent way to extract information from the microscopic, molecular scale up to the meso- and macroscopic scale is still missing. Here, we develop a hybrid procedure that bridges this gap by combining extensive Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, a local Landau-de Gennes theory, classical density functional theory, and finite-size scaling theory. As a test case to demonstrate the power and validity of our novel approach we study the effective interaction among colloids with Boojum defect topology immersed in a nematic liquid crystal. In particular, at sufficiently small separations colloids attract each other if the angle between their center-of-mass distance vector and the far-field nematic director is about 30°. Using the effective potential in coarse-grained two-dimensional MC simulations we show that self-assembled structures formed by the colloids are in excellent agreement with experimental data.
authors.affiliation: Stranski-Laboratorium für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie, Fakultät für Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften, Technische Universität Berlin, Straße des 17. Juni 135, 10623 Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Sergej
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Püschel-Schlotthauer
authors.forename: Tillmann
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Stieger
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Melle
authors.forename: Marco G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Mazza
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schoen