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Coalescence of droplets plays a crucial role in nature and modern technology. Various experimental and theoretical studies explored droplet dynamics in three-dimensional (3D) and on 2D solid or liquid substrates. In this paper, we demonstrate the complete coalescence of isotropic droplets in thin quasi-2D liquids-overheated smectic films. We observe the merging of micrometer-sized flat droplets using high-speed imaging and analyze the shape transformations of the droplets on the timescale of milliseconds. Our studies reveal the scaling laws of the coalescence time, which exhibits a different dependence on the droplet geometry from that in the case of droplets on a solid substrate. A theoretical model is proposed to explain the difference in behavior.

We report on the structure and optical manipulation of the director configurations in emulsions of liquid-crystalline droplets of a compound exhibiting the nematic (N) and the twist-bend nematic (N TB ) phases. We demonstrate a decrease in the ratio of the bent elastic constant K 33 to the splay constant K 11 by nearly 2 orders of magnitude with decreasing temperature in the N phase. The director structures in liquid-crystal droplets doped with a photoswitchable surfactant without and under ultraviolet (UV) light are discussed in light of the strong elastic anisotropy of the investigated compound. We also compare our findings with the results obtained in doped nematic droplets of a conventional 4-cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) liquid crystal. The dynamics of droplets in the N TB phase by UV light irradiation are also studied using polarizing and confocal microscopies.

Using experiments and molecular dynamics simulations, we explore magnetic field-induced phase transformations in suspensions of nonmagnetic rodlike and magnetic sphere-shaped particles. We experimentally demonstrate that an external uniform magnetic field causes the formation of small, stable clusters of magnetic particles that, in turn, induce and control the orientational order of the nonmagnetic subphase. Optical birefringence was studied as a function of the magnetic field and the volume fractions of each particle type. Steric transfer of the orientational order was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations; the results are in qualitative agreement with the experimental observations. By reproducing the general experimental trends, the MD simulation offers a cohesive bottom-up interpretation of the physical behavior of such systems, and it can also be regarded as a guide for further experimental research.

We report a reversible phase separation phenomenon in nonpolar colloidal suspensions of rod-shaped dichroic pigment particles in an electric field. The voltage-frequency phase diagram features a variety of phases with different morphologies. Single static particle-rich islands, chains of islands, and dynamic patterns were found in this system. We demonstrate that those patterns exhibit complex relaxation dynamics toward the homogeneous field-free state once the external field is removed.