Multistability in planar liquid crystal wells

Chong Luo, Apala Majumdar, and Radek Erban
Phys. Rev. E 85, 061702 – Published 8 June 2012
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Abstract

A planar bistable liquid crystal device, reported in Tsakonas et al. [Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 111913 (2007)], is modeled within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. This planar device consists of an array of square micrometer-sized wells. We obtain six different classes of equilibrium profiles and these profiles are classified as diagonal or rotated solutions. In the strong anchoring case, we propose a Dirichlet boundary condition that mimics the experimentally imposed tangent boundary conditions. In the weak anchoring case, we present a suitable surface energy and study the multiplicity of solutions as a function of the anchoring strength. We find that diagonal solutions exist for all values of the anchoring strength W0, while rotated solutions only exist for WWc>0, where Wc is a critical anchoring strength that has been computed numerically. We propose a dynamic model for the switching mechanisms based on only dielectric effects. For sufficiently strong external electric fields, we numerically demonstrate diagonal-to-rotated and rotated-to-diagonal switching by allowing for variable anchoring strength across the domain boundary.

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  • Received 4 November 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.85.061702

©2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Chong Luo*, Apala Majumdar, and Radek Erban

  • Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, 24-29 St. Giles’, Oxford OX1 3LB, United Kingdom

  • *luo@maths.ox.ac.uk
  • majumdar@maths.ox.ac.uk
  • erban@maths.ox.ac.uk

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Issue

Vol. 85, Iss. 6 — June 2012

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