Sessile droplets of nematic and ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals

Marcell Tibor Máthé

Wigner Research Center for Physics & Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Abstract:

The most generally used geometries to investigate the basic behavior or to measure the physical properties of liquid crystals are the cell geometries where both bounding surfaces are flat and solid that are usually treated with aligning layers so the orientation is known on the surface. In contrast to the cells, understanding liquid crystals in frustrated geometries such as in droplets, shells and with surfaces bounded by air or water is much more challenging and less studied.  We investigated the behavior of nematic and ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals in the sessile droplet geometry (see Figure 1). In this case, the bottom surface is flat and solid, similar to the cell geometry, but the upper surface is curved and bounded by air. In sessile droplets, the structures of the realized director fields are not as trivial as in cell geometries.

In our experiments, we investigated how the topological properties of LC sessile droplets can change during anchoring transitions.  Furthermore, we observed an exciting phenomenon in ferroelectric nematic drops related to pyroelectricity.

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