Schedule for: 22w5159 - Defects and Distortions of Layered Complex Fluids

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in Vistas Dining Room, top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Breakfast is served daily between 7 and 9am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

A brief introduction to BIRS with important logistical information, technology instruction, and opportunity for participants to ask questions.

Welcome to Workshop In this session, we'll identify key questions and "big picture" goals for the community of researchers working on layered systems. We'll also identify possible goals for the workshop.

Lunch is served daily between 11:30am and 1:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Meet in the PDC front desk for a guided tour of The Banff Centre campus.

Meet in foyer of TCPL to participate in the BIRS group photo. The photograph will be taken outdoors, so dress appropriately for the weather. Please don't be late, or you might not be in the official group photo!

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in Vistas Dining Room, top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Breakfast is served daily between 7 and 9am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

In this session, a panel of experimentalists will showcase the various techniques brought to study smectics.

Lunch is served daily between 11:30am and 1:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in Vistas Dining Room, top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Breakfast is served daily between 7 and 9am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Lunch is served daily between 11:30am and 1:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in Vistas Dining Room, top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Breakfast is served daily between 7 and 9am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

We consider wetting and dewetting of a layered system of a nematic and an isotropic fluid, resting on a solid substrate. This type of situation, which includes nematic-substrate-isotropic three-phase contact lines are of great interest, both scientifically and technologically. In particular, in recent years, the push to exploit the interfacial, dielectric, and viscoelastic anisotropies of nematics has led to the development of devices used in flow processing, microelectronic production, and adaptive-lens technologies that extend beyond the well-known application of nematics in liquid crystal displays. Understanding many of these emerging technologies, which often involve nematic droplets or layered films, requires a theoretical description of the wetting and dewetting phenomena of nematics. To further understand wetting and dewetting phenomena for nematics, we analyse a two-dimensional static ridge of nematic resting on a solid substrate surrounded by an isotropic fluid. Specifically, we obtain the first complete theoretical description for this system, including nematic Young and Young-Laplace equations. Then, under the assumption that anchoring breaking occurs in regions adjacent to the contact lines, we use the nematic Young equations to determine the contact angle of the nematic ridge as a function of a nematic spreading parameter. Our findings indicate a range of anisotropic wetting and dewetting phenomena, including discontinuous transitions between the equilibrium states of the ridge that do not occur in the fully isotropic case. Authors: JRL Cousins, BR Duffy, SK Wilson and NJ Mottram

Lunch is served daily between 11:30am and 1:30pm in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

A buffet dinner is served daily between 5:30pm and 7:30pm in Vistas Dining Room, top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

Breakfast is served daily between 7 and 9am in the Vistas Dining Room, the top floor of the Sally Borden Building.

In this session, participants will be invited to identify out any possible new collaborations that are emerging from the conference, share any work done during the conference, and we'll collectively identify possible goals and outcomes for further work.

5-day workshop participants are welcome to use BIRS facilities (TCPL ) until 3 pm on Friday, although participants are still required to checkout of the guest rooms by 11AM.

In this session, participants will be invited to identify out any possible new collaborations that are emerging from the conference, share any work done during the conference, and we'll collectively identify possible goals and outcomes for further work.