Effects of Weak Anchoring on the Elastic Distortion of a Biaxial Nematic Liquid Crystal on Surface Grooves

Abstract

A generalized form of anisotropic surface energy for the description of biaxial nematic liquid crystals is proposed, and the effects of weak anchoring on the elastic distortion of the biaxial nematic material on surface grooves is investigated as an extension of our previous work on the effects of strong anchoring [Zhang Z. D., & Ye W. J. (2009). Liq. Cryst., 36, 885–888]. With some approximations for the elastic constants, we obtain a more general expression for the additional elastic distortion energy per unit area induced by the minor director . The results show that finite polar anchoring can provide an important contribution to the additional elastic distortion energy, and the additional term reduces to our previous result with strong polar anchoring.

Keywords:

• Biaxial nematic liquid crystal
• elastic distortion
• surface groove
• weak anchoring

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. 60878047, the Hebei Province Natural Science Foundation of China under grant no. A2010000004, and the Key Subject Construction Project of Hebei Province University.