2000
DOI: 10.1007/s101890050040
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Effective anchoring and scaling in nematic liquid crystals

Abstract: We study, by coarse-graining methods, the dependence of the nematic anchoring energy on the scale at which the orientation of the nematic director is resolved. We obtain a relationship allowing to compare anchoring measurements with different resolutions performed on the same nematic-substrate system. Our theory also permits to calculate the effective macroscopic anchoring corresponding to a given micro-fabricated surface aligning pattern, and to determine the limitations of this effective description. PACS. 6… Show more

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Cited by 8 publications
(3 citation statements)
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“…Molecular factors of course contribute to this phenomenon, but the effect can already be explained on the level of the elastic theory. This was first shown by Berreman [15], and the theory was later refined by different authors [16,17,18]. Here we reconsider the phenomenon and derive simple new expressions for the anchoring angle and the anchoring strength.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 76%
“…Molecular factors of course contribute to this phenomenon, but the effect can already be explained on the level of the elastic theory. This was first shown by Berreman [15], and the theory was later refined by different authors [16,17,18]. Here we reconsider the phenomenon and derive simple new expressions for the anchoring angle and the anchoring strength.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 76%
“…First, we add to the free-energy functional the anchoring energy (2.9). Then, we modify the geometrical setting of Figure 1 by introducing the anchoring length ξ a , similar to the cutoff length used in [16]. We assume (see Figure 5) that the configuration of a nematic subject to weak anchoring coincides with the configuration the same nematic would assume were strong anchoring conditions applied not at its surface ∂B 0 , but rather at a distance ξ a outside from the sample.…”
Section: Weak Anchoringmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The combined effect of a rapidly varying director anchoring and surface melting gives rise to an effective weak-anchoring effect that was first observed in [6]. The problem of relating the effective anchoring extrapolation length to the microscopic roughness parameters has been studied in several theoretical papers, all framed within the Frank theory [7][8][9][10]. They neglect the degree of orientation decrease which has been recognized by many authors as a crucial effect of surface roughness [2,4].…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%