Determination of azimuthal anchoring strength in twisted nematic liquid crystal cells using heterodyne polarimeter

Two external-field-free methods are presented for measuring the azimuthal anchoring strength in twisted nematic liquid crystal (TNLC) cells. For asymmetrical TNLC samples, the twist angle is derived from the phase of the detected signal in a phase-sensitive heterodyne polarimeter and is then used to calculate the weak anchoring strength directly. The measurement resolution which is found to be about 0.01 μJ/m(2) makes the present method sensitive enough for the LC-based bio-sensing application. Using the proposed method, the weak azimuthal anchoring strength of a composite liquid crystal mixture (40% LCT-061153 + 60% MJO-42761) in contact with a plasma-alignment layer is found to be 7.19 μJ/m(2). For symmetrical TNLC samples, the liquid crystals are injected into a wedge cell, and the two-dimensional distributions of the twist angle and cell gap are extracted from the detected phase distribution using a genetic algorithm (GA). The azimuthal anchoring strength is then obtained by applying a fitting technique to the twist angle vs. cell gap curve. Utilizing the proposed approach, it is shown that the strong anchoring strength between a rubbed polyimide (PI) alignment layer and E7 liquid crystal is around 160 μJ/m(2) while that between a rubbed PI alignment layer and MLC-7023 liquid crystal is approximately 32 μJ/m(2).