Chromonics are a class of liquid crystals made of aqueous solutions of plank-like molecules, which self-assemble into semiflexible chains. At a given temperature a nematic phase is formed when the system reaches a sufficiently high concentration. Among the unusual properties of chromonic liquid crystals, particularly prominent is the large anisotropy of elastic constants, which leads to new phenomenologies in confined volumes. To gain insights into the microscopic origin of this behavior, we ...
