Surface reorientation dynamics of nematic liquid crystals

S. Faetti, M. Nobili () and I. Raggi

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 1999, vol. 11, issue 3, 445-453

Abstract: In this paper we report an experimental investigation on the dynamics of the azimuthal director reorientation at a nematic-solid interface. Three qualitatively different kinds of substrates have been investigated: I) intrinsically anisotropic SiO-substrates (60°-evaporation), II) isotropic SiO-substrates (0°-evaporation) and III) rubbed PVA-substrates. In the case II), an in-plane anisotropy was induced cooling slowly the thermotropic nematic liquid crystal (NLC) from the isotropic phase in the presence of a 0.75 T magnetic field. The reorientation dynamic of the surface azimuthal director angle at the switching-on and off of a magnetic (or electric) field has been investigated. All the substrates show comparable azimuthal anchoring energies and two dynamic regimes: a fast dynamic response, driven by the bulk director reorientation and an extremely slow reorientation. The slow dynamics is explained in terms of anisotropic adsorption of NLC molecules on the solid substrate and is well represented by a stretched exponential. Copyright Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 1999

Keywords: PACS. 61.30.Gd Orientationnal order of liquid crystals; electric and magnetic field effects on order; 78.20.Ci Optical constants: refractive index; complex dielectric constant; absorption; reflexion and transmission coefficients; emissivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s100510050955 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:eurphb:v:11:y:1999:i:3:p:445-453:10.1007/s100510050955

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10051

DOI: 10.1007/s100510050955

Access Statistics for this article

The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems is currently edited by P. Hänggi and Angel Rubio

More articles in The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems from Springer, EDP Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().