The effect of anchoring on nematic flow in channels

Abstract

Understanding the flow of liquid crystals in microfluidic environments plays an important role in many fields, including device design and microbiology. We perform hybrid lattice-Boltzmann simulations of a nematic liquid crystal flowing under an applied pressure gradient in two-dimensional channels with various anchoring boundary conditions at the substrate walls. We investigate the relation between flow rate and pressure gradient and the corresponding profile of the nematic director, and find significant departures from the linear Poiseuille relation. We also identify a morphological transition in the director profile and explain this in terms of an instability in the dynamical equations. We examine the qualitative and quantitative effects of changing the type and strength of the anchoring. Understanding such effects may provide a useful means of quantifying the anchoring of a substrate by measuring its flow properties.

References in corpus (3)

• Spontaneous motion in hierarchically assembled active matter
• Meso-scale turbulence in living fluids
• Steady-state hydrodynamic instabilities of active liquid crystals: Hybrid lattice Boltzmann simulations

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Interplay of Structure, Elasticity and Dynamics in Actin-Based Nematic Materials
• Microfluidic control over topological states in channel-confined nematic flows
• Sculpting stable structures in pure liquids
• Multiparticle Collision Dynamics for Tensorial Nematodynamics
• Microfluidic Flow of Cholesteric Liquid Crystals
• Hele-Shaw flow of a nematic liquid crystal