Search results for "Sciences de la Terre"
showing 10 items of 44 documents
Dynamic tuning of the director field in liquid crystal shells using block copolymers
2020
When an orientationally ordered system, like a nematic liquid crystal (LC), is confined on a self-closing spherical shell, topological constraints arise with intriguing consequences that depend critically on how the LC is aligned in the shell. We demonstrate reversible dynamic tuning of the alignment, and thereby the topology, of nematic LC shells stabilized by the nonionic amphiphilic block copolymer Pluronic F127. Deep in the nematic phase, the director (the average molecule orientation) is tangential to the interface, but upon approaching the temperature TNI of the nematic– isotropic transition, the director realigns to normal. We link this to a delicate interplay between an interfacial …
Computing absolute free energies of disordered structures by molecular simulation
2009
We present a Monte Carlo simulation technique by which the free energy of disordered systems can be computed directly. It is based on thermodynamic integration. The central idea is to construct an analytically solvable reference system from a configuration which is representative for the state of interest. The method can be applied to lattice models (e.g., the Ising model) as well as off-lattice molecular models. We focus mainly on the more challenging off-lattice case. We propose a Monte Carlo algorithm, by which the thermodynamic integration path can be sampled efficiently. At the examples of the hard sphere liquid and a hard disk solid with a defect, we discuss several properties of the …
Mapping and determinism of soil microbial community distribution across an agricultural landscape.
2015
Article en open access; International audience; Despite the relevance of landscape, regarding the spatial patterning of microbial communities and the relative influence of environmental parameters versus human activities, few investigations have been conducted at this scale. Here, we used a systematic grid to characterize the distribution of soil microbial communities at 278 sites across a monitored agricultural landscape of 13km(2). Molecular microbial biomass was estimated by soil DNA recovery and bacterial diversity by 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing. Geostatistics provided the first maps of microbial community at this scale and revealed a heterogeneous but spatially structured distribution…
Tuning the defect configurations in nematic and smectic liquid crystalline shells
2013
Thin liquid crystalline shells surrounding and surrounded by aqueous phases can be conveniently produced using a nested capillary microfluidic system, as was first demonstrated by Fernandez-Nieves et al. in 2007. By choosing particular combinations of stabilizers in the internal and external phases, different types of alignment, uniform or hybrid, can be ensured within the shell. Here, we investigate shells in the nematic and smectic phases under varying boundary conditions, focusing in particular on textural transformations during phase transitions, on the interaction between topological defects in the director field and inclusions in the liquid crystal (LC), and on the possibility to rel…
Inhomogeneous free-electron distribution in InN nanowires: Photoluminescence excitation experiments
2010
Photoluminescence excitation (PLE) spectra have been measured for a set of self-assembled InN nanowires (NWs) and a high-crystalline quality InN layer grown by molecular-beam epitaxy. The PLE experimental lineshapes have been reproduced by a self-consistent calculation of the absorption in a cylindrical InN NW. The differences in the PLE spectra can be accounted for the inhomogeneous electron distribution within the NWs caused by a bulk donor concentration $({N}_{D}^{+})$ and a two-dimensional density of ionized surface states $({N}_{ss}^{+})$. For NW radii larger than 30 nm, ${N}_{D}^{+}$ and ${N}_{ss}^{+}$ modify the absorption edge and the lineshape, respectively, and can be determined f…
LDA+Uand tight-binding electronic structure of InN nanowires
2013
In this paper we employ a combined ab initio and tight-binding approach to obtain the electronic and optical properties of hydrogenated Indium nitride InN nanowires. We first discuss InN band structure for the wurtzite structure calculated at the LDA+U level and use this information to extract the parameters needed for an empirical tight-binging implementation. These parameters are then employed to calculate the electronic and optical properties of InN nanowires in a diameter range that would not be affordable by ab initio techniques. The reliability of the large nanowires results is assessed by explicitly comparing the electronic structure of a small diameter wire studied both at LDA+U and…
Excitons in few-layer hexagonal boron nitride: Davydov splitting and surface localization
2018
Hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) has been attracting great attention because of its strong excitonic effects. Taking into account few-layer systems, we investigate theoretically the effects of the number of layers on quasiparticle energies, absorption spectra, and excitonic states, placing particular focus on the Davydov splitting of the lowest bound excitons. We describe how the inter-layer interaction as well as the variation in electronic screening as a function of layer number $N$ affects the electronic and optical properties. Using both \textit{ab initio} simulations and a tight-binding model for an effective Hamiltonian describing the excitons, we characterize in detail the symmetry of t…
Depletion induced isotropic-isotropic phase separation in suspensions of rod-like colloids
2007
When non-adsorbing polymers are added to an isotropic suspension of rod-like colloids, the colloids effectively attract each other via depletion forces. We performed Monte Carlo simulations to study the phase diagram of such rod-polymer mixture. The colloidal rods were modeled as hard spherocylinders; the polymers were described as spheres of the same diameter as the rods. The polymers may overlap with no energy cost, while the overlap of polymers and rods is forbidden. Large amounts of depletant cause phase separation of the mixture. We estimated the phase boundaries of isotropic-isotropic coexistence both in the bulk and in confinement. To determine the phase boundaries we applied the gra…
One-piece micropumps from liquid crystalline core-shell particles
2012
Responsive polymers are low-cost, light weight and flexible, and thus an attractive class of materials for the integration into micromechanical and lab-on-chip systems. Triggered by external stimuli, liquid crystalline elastomers are able to perform mechanical motion and can be utilized as microactuators. Here we present the fabrication of one-piece micropumps from liquid crystalline core-shell elastomer particles via a microfluidic double-emulsion process, the continuous nature of which enables a low-cost and rapid production. The liquid crystalline elastomer shell contains a liquid core, which is reversibly pumped into and out of the particle by actuation of the liquid crystalline shell i…
Depletion-induced percolation in networks of nanorods.
2006
Above a certain density threshold, suspensions of rod-like colloidal particles form system-spanning networks. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate how the depletion forces caused by spherical particles affect these networks in isotropic suspensions of rods. Although the depletion forces are strongly anisotropic and favor alignment of the rods, the percolation threshold of the rods decreases significantly. The relative size of the effect increases with the aspect ratio of the rods. The structural changes induced in the suspension by the depletant are characterized in detail and the system is compared to an ideal fluid of freely interpenetrable rods.