Nematic order on a deformable vesicle with anchoring effects

Nematic anchoring on carbon nanotubes

A dilute suspension of carbon nanotubes CNTs in a nematic liquid crystal LC does not disturb the LC director. Due to a strong LC-CNT anchoring energy and structural symmetry matching, CNT long axis follows the director field, possessing enhanced dielectric anisotropy of the LC media. This strong anchoring energy stabilizes local pseudonematic domains, resulting in nonzero dielectric anisotropy ...

Continuous nematic anchoring transition due to surface-induced smectic order.

A continuous transition from tilted to homeotropic alignment at an interface is observed at a temperature T(a) for a nematic liquid crystal on cooling toward the nematic-smectic-A phase transition temperature. T(a) is found to depend on the treatment of the substrate. The behavior is examined theoretically in terms of a pair of competing easy axes (homeotropic and planar) and the tilt elasticit...

[Article] Effects of weak anchoring on the equivalent anchoring energy in a nematic cell with large amplitude of the grooves

Surface Walls on a Bistable Anchoring of Nematic Liquid Crystals

We observe the defects separating nematic domains of two easy orientations, above a bistable orienting SiO evaporated glass plate. The defects are coreless walls. Their width depends on the bulk texture imposed by the neInatic cell geometry. For thin enough saInples, we have found situations where the wall thickness diverges, I.e., where the texture can force a surface orientation exactly along...

Effect of smectic short-range order on the discontinuous anchoring transition in nematic liquid crystals.

We report studies on the temperature dependent alignment behavior of a homologous series of trans, trans- 4, 4'-dialkyl-(1α,1' α-bicyclohexyl)-4β-carbonitrile (CCNs) on a perfluoropolymer coated cells. Among six compounds in the series, one (CCN-35) has only nematic phase and the remaining five have either smectic-A or smectic-B in addition to the nematic phase. We simultaneously performed temp...