8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

P3.22Fri 911:10-14:00Colloidal particles at a cholesteric liquid crystal interfaceAnne Pawsey, 1 Juho Lintuvuori, 1 Job Thijssen, 1 Davide Marenduzzo, 1 and PaulClegg 11 School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road EH9 3JZ,Edinburgh, United KingdomBoth particles dispersed in a liquid crystalline medium and particles trapped at a liquid-liquid interfaceare topics of current interest. In the liquid crystal case the particles seed defects in the orderedphases and new, effective, particle-particle interactions are induced. The medium of choice for themajority of this research has been nematic liquid crystals. New physics can be anticipated when theliquid crystal has a characteristic length scale which is similar to the particle size. We are exploringthis for the case where the characteristic length is the pitch of a chiral liquid crystal. We present anovel system in which melamine particles are trapped at an interface between the cholesteric liquidcrystal and an isotropic liquid (silicone oil which induces homeotropic anchoring). New resultson the behaviour of particles trapped at this complex interface will be presented as a function ofparticle size. Comparisons with lattice Boltzmann simulations will also be discussed.22