Self-propulsion and change in director of nematic liquid crystalline droplets during dissolution.

Abstract

Objects with self-propelling mechanisms or similar properties to them are called active matter. In the self-propulsion of liquid crystalline(LC) droplets, which is an example of the active matter, various motions are induced by the interaction between the director and the flow fields in the droplets. In this study, we observed the LC droplet bound near the air interface of a liquid solvent. As a result, we observed that the director in LC droplet showed 3 different states during the dissolution process, and that the droplet motions in these states are markedly different from each other.