Colloidal interactions and transport in nematic liquid crystals

We describe a new nematic liquid-crystal colloid system which is characterized by both charge stabilization of the particles and an interaction force. We estimate the effective charge of the particles by electrophoretic measurements and find that in such systems the director anchoring energy W is very low and the particles have little director distortion around them. The interaction force is created by producing a radial distribution of the nematic order parameter around a locally isotropic region created by ir laser heating. We theoretically describe this as being due to the induced flexoelectric polarization, the quadrupolar symmetry of which provides the required long-range force acting on charged particles.