Sharif Digital Repository

Nematic shells of liquid crystals have been provided in microscales. Defect structures in the shells are very essential in the electro-optical applications of such colloidal objects. We have numerically minimized the free energy of symmetric and asymmetric spherical shells of the nematic liquid crystal. Considering degenerate planar anchoring on the surfaces and isotropic nematic elasticity, a variety of defect structures are observed by controlling or varying the thicknesses of the shell and its degree of asymmetry. In symmetric shells, our calculations show that boojums (bipolar) defects appear in thick shells and tetrahedral (baseball) defects in thin shells. In asymmetric shells, while... 

Crystallographic texture is one of the most sensitive parameters for controlling the microstructure of electrodeposited layers. In this work, we study the crystallographic texture of electrodeposited nickel-silicon carbide coatings. The nickel coatings containing SiC nanoparticles and microparticles were electrodeposited from an additive-free sulfate bath containing nickel ions and SiC particles. The effect of current density on the codeposited Ni/SiC was studied. The coatings were analyzed with scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction. Pole figure studies were done to characterize the evolved crystallographic texture. The X-ray scans followed by Rietveld analysis using the...