Material-independent determination of anchoring properties on rubbed polyimide surfaces

Nematic liquid crystal alignment on subwavelength metal gratings

We have studied the alignment of a nematic liquid crystal (LC) material on aluminum subwavelength nanogratings as a function of the period, p, and the slit width to period ratio, w/p. A method, based on Fourier analysis of the transmittance spectra of the LC grating system, has been applied. We show that the gratings provide stable planar alignment only for shorter periods and narrower slits (p < 400 nm, w/p < 2/3). As these parameters increase, the homogeneous surface alignment changes to domains with different tilt angles or to spatially modulated alignment. We have also obtained a 90° twisted LC director distribution, implying sufficiently strong azimuthal LC anchoring at the grating surface.

Determination of liquid-crystal polar anchoring energy by electrical measurements

We propose a simple method for the determination of liquid-crystal (LC) polar anchoring energy by electrical measurements. The basic idea of this method is a two-channel scheme for capacitance measurements. The first channel uses one cell with a planar LC cell, while the second a LC cell with vertical alignment. One of the LC cells can have a high pretilt angle. The proposed method allows investigating anchoring properties of both planar and vertical aligned LC materials. Simultaneous measurements of the two cells compensate all volume effects in LC bulk and provide a good opportunity to study directly the LC-surface interaction. The method can be applied for LC cells, which do not have uniform azimuthal orientation. We used this method to investigate the polar anchoring properties of photoaligning material before and after illumination and for LC structures with a high pretilt angle.

Surface-anchoring properties related to the distribution of polyimide chains in a twisted nematic liquid-crystal cell

On the basis of a general Rapini and Papoular equation and the unified surface-anchoring energy, surface-anchoring strength is newly defined theoretically as a function of the azimuthal deviation angle of the surface liquid-crystal directors and the statistical distribution of polyimide chains in a typical twisted nematic liquid-crystal cell. Then these are determined experimentally by the surface second-harmonic generation method, which is nonlinear optics, and the optical phase retardation method. We assume that the anisotropy distribution of polyimide chains induced by the rubbing strength is dominated by a Gaussian distribution around the rubbing direction.

Dependence of threshold behavior upon surface distribution of polymer chains in a twisted nematic liquid crystal

On the basis of a general Rapini and Papoular equation and a unified surface anchoring energy theory, dependence of the threshold behavior of the liquid crystal director upon the statistical distribution of polyimide chains is theoretically investigated for a twisted nematic liquid crystal cell. We assumed that the anisotropy distribution of polyimide chains induced by the rubbing can be dominated by a Gaussian distribution around the rubbing direction. Our results show that the threshold behavior of a twisted nematic liquid crystal is affected strongly by the surface distribution of polymer chains.