Mixtures of blue phase liquid crystal with simple liquids: elastic emulsions and cubic fluid cylinders

Abstract

We investigate numerically the behaviour of a phase-separating mixture of a blue phase I liquid crystal with an isotropic fluid. The resulting morphology is primarily controlled by an inverse capillary number, $\chi$, setting the balance between interfacial and elastic forces. When $\chi$ and the concentration of the isotropic component are both low, the blue phase disclination lattice templates a cubic array of fluid cylinders. For larger $\chi$, the isotropic phase arranges primarily into liquid emulsion droplets which coarsen very slowly, rewiring the blue phase disclination lines into an amorphous elastic network. Our blue phase/simple fluid composites can be externally manipulated: an electric field can trigger a morphological transition between cubic fluid cylinder phases with different topologies.

7 pages, 4 figures; contains Supplementary Material as Appendix. Supplementary Movies Movies can be found at https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/~dmarendu/BPMixtureSM.html