抄録
When a liquid crystal is used as a lubricant, low friction coefficients of around 0.01 were achieved in a boundary lubrication regime. However, the detailed mechanism has not been clarified. In this study, we developed original method that can measure viscosity and order parameter simultaneously with liquid crystals confined in nanometer sized gap widths. We revealed apparent viscosities decreased drastically with the decrease of gap when liquid crystals were sheared in parallel to the direction of photo alignment by PVCi films. Our results also indicates that the viscosity decrease may be caused by the shear thinning observed at gap less than 50 nm. These results can be one of the explanations of low friction coefficients that liquid crystals had.
