PA13 Effect of the periodic alignment on the liquid crystal wetting

Abstract

Nematic liquid crystal aligns uniformly on the uniformly rubbed surface. Even the liquid crystal in the bulk is in the isotropic phase, the liquid crystal near the alignment surface shows nematic ordering originated from the interaction between the liquid crystal and alignment surface. This property is very dependent on the surface character and inevitably related to the elastic property. Here we investigated the effect of the periodic alignment of liquid crystal, in other words the elastic deformation, to this wetting.