The director field distribution with the strongly pinned alignment in nematic structures at the polymer surface

We investigate orientational nematic liquid crystal structures that form at the polymer surface due to adsorption, their stability against the schlieren texture and features of point and linear singularities in them. We demonstrate that surface disclination lines, which also occur due to molecular a...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Liquid crystals 2015-01, Vol.42 (1), p.57-64
Main Authors: Parshin, Alexander M., Zyryanov, Victor Y., Shabanov, Vasily F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adsorption
Alignment
director configuration
disclination
Disclinations
Liquid crystal polymers
Liquid crystals
Molecular structure
Molecules
Nematic
orientational order
polymer surface
Singularities
Surface chemistry
Texture
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We investigate orientational nematic liquid crystal structures that form at the polymer surface due to adsorption, their stability against the schlieren texture and features of point and linear singularities in them. We demonstrate that surface disclination lines, which also occur due to molecular adsorption, can lead to azimuthal anchoring of a bulk layer and make the singularities with the charge m = ±1 stable. We consider the director field distribution in a nematic layer as a result of the combination of two aligning factors, which are the linear disclination that tend to impose uniform planar ordering and point defects that impart the radial configuration to the director. With the use of the calculation, we analyse the energies of elastic distortions of the director field for the radial-planar, radial-homeotropic and radial-radial configurations, depending on the nematic layer thickness.
ISSN:0267-8292
1366-5855
DOI:10.1080/02678292.2014.960904