Dataset associated with "Curvature directed anchoring and defect structure of colloidal smectic liquid crystals in confinement"

Smectic defects thereby include both discontinuities in the rod orientational order (disclinations), as well as in the positional order (dislocations). In this work, we use both experiments and simulations to probe how local and global geometrical frustrations affect defect formation in hard-rod smectics.

We confine a particle-resolved, colloidal smectic within elliptical wells of varying size and shape for a smooth variation of the boundary curvature. We find that the rod orientation near a boundary — the anchoring — depends upon the boundary curvature, with an anchoring transition observed at a critical radius of curvature approximately twice the rod length. The anchoring controls the smectic defect structure.