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

Fri 911:10-14:00P3.27Colloidal particles with planar anchoring in liquidcrystalsNuno M Silvestre, 1 Mykola Tasinkevych, 2 Margarida M Telo da Gama, 1 andSiegfried Dietrich 21 CFTC - Centro de Física Teórica e Computacional, Avenida Prof. Gama Pinto, 2,1649-003, Lisboa, Portugal2 Max-Plank-Institut für Metallforschung, Stuttgart, GermanyColloidal particles in liquid crystals has attracted a great deal of attention both in three- and twodimensionalsystems. And although the phenomena observed is very similar, they do exhibit someimportant differences. In this presentation we will focus on colloidal particles with planar anchoringdispersed in bulk nematic liquid crystals and in smectic C films. Regardless the fact that thesimilarity between the two systems is unavoidable, since the latter can be thought of as the twodimensionalprojection of the former, we will show that two interacting colloidal particles withplanar anchoring exhibit distinct behavior that leads to different equilibrium configurations.27