Bistable anchoring of nematics on rough substrates
arXiv:0810.4151 · doi:10.1209/epl/i2006-10248-8
Abstract
We analyze the interplay between wetting and anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on disordering, e.g., rough substrates in the framework of the Landau-de Gennes theory, in situations of competing homeotropic and planar easy axes on the substrate and the nematic-isotropic (NI) interface. The phase diagram for azimuthally symmetric substrates is calculated. We identify two regimes - a strongly coupled regime, where the wetting transition coincides with an anchoring transition, and a weakly coupled regime, where the two are separated. The anchoring transition is first order and switches between homeotropic and planar anchoring. The two competing orientations are metastable over a broad parameter range. Hence such surfaces can be used to generate bistable surfaces.
References in corpus (5)
- Surface anchoring on layers of grafted liquid-crystalline chain molecules: A computer simulation
- Monte Carlo simulations of liquid crystals near rough walls
- Nematic liquid crystals at rough and fluctuating interfaces
- Phase behavior of a nematic liquid crystal in contact with a chemically and geometrically structured substrate
- Isotropic-nematic transition in liquid crystals confined between rough walls