Elastic interaction between colloidal particles in confined nematic liquid crystals

Abstract

The theory of elastic interaction of micron size axially symmetric colloidal particles immersed into confined nematic liquid crystal has been proposed. General formulas are obtained for the self energy of one colloidal particle and interaction energy between two particles in arbitrary confined NLC with strong anchoring condition on the bounding surface. Particular cases of dipole-dipole interaction in the homeotropic and planar nematic cell with thickness $L$ are considered and found to be exponentially screened on far distances with decay length ${\lambda }_{dd}=\frac{L}{\pi }$. It is predicted that bounding surfaces in the planar cell crucially change the attraction and repulsion zones of usual dipole-dipole interaction. As well it is predicted that \textit{the decay length} in quadrupolar interaction is \textit{two times smaller} than for the dipolar case.

4 pages,2 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Ordered droplet structures at the liquid crystal surface and elastic-capillary colloidal interactions

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Transport of Particles in Liquid Crystals
• Theory of Elastic Interaction of the Colloidal Particles in the Nematic Liquid Crystal Near One Wall and in the Nematic Cell
• Theory of elastic interaction between colloidal particles in the nematic cell in the presence of the external electric or magnetic field
• Attraction/repulsion switching of non-equilibrium depletion interaction caused by blockade effect in gas of interacting particles. II
• Freedericksz-like positional transition of a micro-droplet suspended in a nematic cell
• Surface induced structures in nematic liquid crystal colloids
• Formation of a fast "lane" for positional transition in a microparticle-suspended nematic liquid crystal cell