Liquid crystal films on curved surfaces: An entropic sampling study

D. Jayasri, T. Sairam, K.P.N. Murthy and V.S.S. Sastry

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2011, vol. 390, issue 23, 4549-4554

Abstract: The confining effect of a spherical substrate inducing anchoring (normal to the surface) on rod-like liquid crystal molecules contained in a thin film spread over it has been investigated with regard to possible changes in the nature of the isotropic-to-nematic phase transition as the sample is cooled. The focus of these Monte Carlo simulations is to study the competing effects of the homeotropic anchoring due to the surface inducing orientational ordering in the radial direction and the inherent uniaxial order promoted by the intermolecular interactions. By adopting an entropic sampling procedure, we could investigate this transition with a high temperature precision, and we studied the effect of the surface anchoring strength on the phase diagram for a specifically chosen geometry. We find that there is a threshold anchoring strength of the surface below which uniaxial nematic phase results, and above which the isotropic fluid cools to a radially ordered nematic phase, besides of course expected changes in the phase transition temperature with the anchoring strength. In the vicinity of the threshold anchoring strength we observe a bistable region between these two structures, clearly brought out by the characteristics of the corresponding microstates constituting the entropic ensemble.

Keywords: Nematic thin film; Curved substrates; Monte Carlo simulation; Wang–Landau algorithm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437111005644
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:390:y:2011:i:23:p:4549-4554

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2011.07.017

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().