Microscopic Analysis of Lehmann Effect by Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Abstract

Tilted monolayers composed of chiral liquid crystals (LCs) are known to exhibit the molecular collective precession under the transmembrane mass flow. This phenomenon has been successfully explained from the macroscopic point of view as a 2D-type "Lehmann Effect," while the microscopic mechanism has not been cleared yet. In order to reveal the individual molecular motion during Lehmann rotation, we calculated the torque on single isolated chiral LC molecule given by the flow, with the use of molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The calculation result suggests that the collision of the flow molecules with the chiral LC molecule should cause the "molecular level" discriminative torque on each LC molecule.