Electrically assisted light-induced azimuthal gliding of the nematic liquid crystal easy axis on photoaligned substrates

Abstract

We study azimuthal gliding of the easy axis that occurs in nematic liquid crystals brought in contact with the photoaligned azo-dye film under the action of reorienting UV light combined with an in-plane electric field. For irradiation with the linearly polarized light, dynamics of easy axis reorientation is found to be faster as compared to the case of non-polarized light. In addition, it slows down with the initial irradiation dose used to prepare the azo-dye film. This effect is interpreted by using the previously suggested phenomenological model. We present the theoretical results computed by solving the torque balance equations of the model that agree very well with the experimental data.

revtex4-1, 7 pages, 5 figure

References in corpus (3)

• Photoinduced ordering and anchoring properties of azo-dye films
• Kinetics of photoinduced ordering in azo-dye films: two-state and diffusion models
• Liquid crystal anchoring transitions on aligning substrates processed by plasma beam

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Photoinduced reordering in thin azo-dye films and light-induced reorientation dynamics of nematic liquid-crystal easy axis
• Effects of polarization azimuth in dynamics of electrically assisted light-induced gliding of nematic liquid-crystal easy axis
• Electrically assisted light-induced gliding of nematic liquid-crystal easy axis at varying polarization azimuth of reorienting light: model and experiment