Fig. 1: The möbiuson family.
From: Liquid crystal defect structures with Möbius strip topology
a, A POM image of an N = 40 möbiuson (left, 40L) and its Möbius-like building blocks (top right), within which the director field is tangent to the surface of a Möbius strip. Here, n(r) is coloured according to orientations as shown in the colour-coded order parameter space (bottom right). b, A Möbius strip made from paper. c,d, POMs of a linear (c) and a spontaneously curved (d) fibre-like structure. e–h, POMs (left) and bright-field images (right) of möbiusons with mirror symmetry (e), right- (f) and left-handed folding symmetry (g), and D∞ symmetry (h). i, Experimental encoding of ‘C’ and ‘U’ using the alphabetic ASCII codes, where the number of folds of the möbiuson is correlated to the ASCII table. Cell gap d = 10 μm, pitch p = 4.6 μm (\(d/p = 2.2\)) and U ≈ 3.0 V for all images. The directions of crossed polarizers in POMs are shown by double arrows. Scale bar 30 μm in a, 5 μm in c–h and 30 μm in i.
