Liquid crystals functionalizing for photonic, bio-photonic and multi physics devices

The knowledge on the manipulation of energy is of core importance for research, technological innovation and industry. The different materials and configurations are used to build the related devices which are monopurpose and mono physics dealing with a single type of energy. An alternative to bypass these problems is the usage of liquid crystals: Inanimate or living ones. In this work, we show our results on modeling and simulating three kinds of diode (thermal, bio-optical and thermal-optical), a sensor based on the thermal hall effect and a thermal-optical controller. It was found that diodes having an asymmetric molecular director and asymmetric physical tensors with rectification effect can be created by an escaped radial disclination confined in an capillary tube (dielectric, thermal conductivity). This asymmetry, studied by classical and geometrical models generates the thermal and optical rectifications. For such diodes, we study them made by 5CB and a chromonic liquid crystal hosting the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. The sensor based on the thermal Hall effect uses a hypothetic chiral biaxial nematic liquid crystal with a magnetic dipole composing a strip, with an initial longitudinal temperature gradient. The thermal optical controller between the concentric cylinders is allowed to switch between two molecular configurations: And we found simultaneous concentration and repulsion of heat and light. Our results present new examples of manipulating heat, light and both simultaneously using liquid crystals, allowing one to apply such materials for developing devices that process more information at the same time.