Structural Study of the Effect of Substrate Preparation, Confinement and Substrate Competition on Liquid Crystal Films

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

9530933 Martinez-Miranda The physical properties of liquid crystal (LC) materials in a confined geometry deviate from those of the bulk liquid crystal. This project studies LC's confined in cells made up of substrate plates that can impose different boundary conditions at the substrate - LC interface, depending on the way each substrate is prepared. The purpose of this work is to study the effect of substrates consisting of photolithographed gratings, on the structure of layered (smectic) liquid crystals films, as a function of film thickness, depth within the film, and temperature. The resulting competition may produce (multi)layering within the LC film, and in some materials, a variation of molecular layer spacing within the film. ***