title: Around the corner: Colloidal assembly and wiring in groovy nematic cells.
abstract: We study colloids suspended in nematic liquid crystal in grooves with homeotropic anchoring. We observe "eyelashes", topological dipole chains that follow the local, curved director field. These beget wires that connect the groove corners to topographical features on the cell lid to yield oriented, curvilinear colloidal wires spanning the cell, formed in a nonsingular director field. As the groove aspect ratio changes, we find different ground states and corroborate our observation with numerics. Our results rely upon on the scale of topographical features, the sharpness of edges, and the colloid-sourced distortions; all these elements can be exploited to guide the formation of reconfigurable structures in nematics.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Yimin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Francesca
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Serra
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.|School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Beller
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.|Department of Physics, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
authors.forename: Mohamed A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Gharbi
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Ningwei
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Shu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Randall D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Kamien
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter (LRSM), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
authors.forename: Kathleen J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Stebe