Electrically-driven solitons in nematic liquid crystals – EDISONe

Solitons in nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) are self-confined perturbations of orientation of their elongated molecules. Robust to perturbations, solitons can propagate long distances without distortion. Besides simple collisions, they can interact between each-other and with their surrounding in a plenty of ways (including reflection, mutual attraction and redirection, annihilation, etc.). Still, the full variety of solitons structures and their interactions remains unexplored because of lack of control over targeted solitons generation. The project EDISONe proposes an original approach to fill this gap. In particular, EDISONe aims at triggered nucleation of individual solitons. The kinetics and interaction of on-demand generated solitons will be studied using spatially resolved polarimetry and high-speed imaging. Results of this project will pave the way toward realization of self-assembled soft actuators and circuits for transport in NLCs.