3 research outputs found

    Angular deficits in flat space: Remotely controllable apertures in nematic solid sheets

    No full text
    Recent attention has been given to the realization of angular deficits and surpluses in the local ground-state geometry of thin sheets of nematic solids as out-of-plane deformations. Such systems exhibit conical or anti-conical curvature sites, or possibly arrays of such polyhedral corners, in order to satisfy the material's spontaneous strain-generated metric requirements. Here, we turn the angular deficit requirement on its head, and show theoretically and experimentally that by appropriately altering the topology of the initially flat sheet-for example, by cutting it in carefully chosen regions-the same angular deficits and surpluses may manifest simply in-plane by changing the geometry of the cut region. Such amechanism offers a route to apertures or arrays of apertures that may be reversibly opened and closed by applying spontaneous strain with heat, light or chemical potential. Copyright © The Royal Society 2013.M.W. thanks the EPSRC for funding under grant no. EP/E051251/1, and C.S.S. thanks the Spanish MINECO project MAT2011-27978-C02-02, CSIC project i-LINK0394, Gobierno de Aragón, and FEDER funding (EU) for their financial support.Peer Reviewe

    Angular deficits in flat space: remotely controllable apertures in nematic solid sheets

    No full text
    Recent attention has been given to the realization of angular deficits and surpluses in the local ground-state geometry of thin sheets of nematic solids as out-of-plane deformations. Such systems exhibit conical or anti-conical curvature sites, or possibly arrays of such polyhedral corners, in order to satisfy the material's spontaneous strain-generated metric requirements. Here, we turn the angular deficit requirement on its head, and show theoretically and experimentally that by appropriately altering the topology of the initially flat sheet-for example, by cutting it in carefully chosen regions-the same angular deficits and surpluses may manifest simply in-plane by changing the geometry of the cut region. Such amechanism offers a route to apertures or arrays of apertures that may be reversibly opened and closed by applying spontaneous strain with heat, light or chemical potential
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