The present review is devoted to recent studies of structures with topological defects on nematic liquid crystal (NLC) shells of different shapes and to the possibility of using external electric fields to manipulate these structures. It is shown that principal curvatures of bounding surfaces have a strong effect on the number and arrangement of these defects on NLC shells. It is also shown that external electric fields can be used to control the number of valence centers occurring on these shells, thus unveiling their capability of acting as multivalent building blocks for nanophotonic devices.

中文翻译：

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向列型液晶壳中的缺陷结构

本综述致力于对具有不同形状的向列液晶（NLC）壳上具有拓扑缺陷的结构的最新研究，以及使用外部电场操纵这些结构的可能性。结果表明，边界表面的主曲率对这些缺陷在NLC壳上的数量和排列有很大影响。还表明，外部电场可用于控制这些壳上出现的价中心的数量，从而揭示了它们充当纳米光子器件的多价构建基的能力。