Influence of the flow on the anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on a Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer studied by optical second-harmonic generation

Details Influence of the flow on the anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on a Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer studied by optical second-harmonic generation Influence of the flow on the anchoring of nematic liquid crystals on a Langmuir-Blodgett monolayer studied by optical second-harmonic generation

2000-11-05

arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0011075v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

LaTeX2e article, 11 figures, 17 EPS files, submitted

Scientific paper

10.1007/s101890170062

The influence of capillary flow on the alignment of the nematic liquid crystal MBBA on fatty acid Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers was studied by optical second-harmonic generation. The surface dipole sensitivity of the technique allows probing the orientation of the first liquid crystal monolayer in the presence of the liquid crystal bulk. It was found that capillary flow causes the first monolayer of liquid crystal molecules in contact with the fatty acid monolayer to be oriented in the flow direction with a large pretilt (78 degrees), resulting in a quasi-planar alignment with splay-bend deformation of the nematic director in the bulk. itself is affected by the flow. The quasi-planar flow-induced alignment was found to be metastable. Once the flow ceases, circular domains of homeotropic orientation nucleate in the sample and expand until the whole sample becomes homeotropic. This relaxation process from flow-induced quasi-planar to surface-induced homeotropic alignment was also monitored by SHG. It was found that in the homeotropic state the first nematic layer presents a pretilt of 38 degrees almost isotropically distributed in the plane of the cell, with a slight preference for the direction of the previous flow.

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