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High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
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Liquid crystal cells with "dirty" substrates.

Leo Radzihovsky1, Quan Zhang

  • 1Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.

Physical Review Letters
|November 13, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Surface pinning in liquid crystals introduces random disorder, marginally destabilizing orientational order. This study reveals universal roughness in liquid crystal systems due to this disorder.

Area of Science:

  • Condensed matter physics
  • Materials science

Background:

  • Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) rely on controlled orientational order.
  • Substrate surface imperfections can disrupt this order through random pinning.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To model and understand the impact of random surface pinning on liquid crystal orientational order.
  • To investigate the resulting distortions and universal scaling behaviors.

Main Methods:

  • Modeling the system using a random-field xy model with surface heterogeneity.
  • Computing the Larkin length scale and associated distortions.
  • Utilizing functional renormalization group and matching methods to calculate correlation functions.

Main Results:

  • Orientational order in 3D liquid crystals is marginally unstable to random surface pinning.

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Published on: May 15, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 18, 2026

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
06:24

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal

Published on: October 31, 2019

An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation
10:33

An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation

Published on: February 27, 2019

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
06:26

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets

Published on: May 15, 2017

  • Universal logarithmic and double-logarithmic roughness observed in 2D and 3D, respectively.
  • Analysis of crossovers as a function of disorder strength and cell thickness.

    • Conclusions:

    • Random surface pinning significantly impacts liquid crystal order, leading to universal scaling laws.
    • The findings provide insights into the behavior of liquid crystals in real-world, imperfect devices.