One-dimensional theoretical analysis of coupling and confinement effects on the cybotactic clusters of bent-core nematic liquid crystals

Patranabish, Sourav and Wang, Yiwei and Sinha, Aloka and Majumdar, Apala (2019) One-dimensional theoretical analysis of coupling and confinement effects on the cybotactic clusters of bent-core nematic liquid crystals. Physical Review E, 99 (1). 012703. ISSN 2470-0053 (https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.99.012703)

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Abstract

The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smecticlike cybotactic clusters which are promising for electro-optic applications. We have studied a one-dimensional Landau–de Gennes model of spatially inhomogeneous order parameters for the N phase of bent-core LCs. We investigate the effects of spatial confinement and coupling (between these clusters and the surrounding LC molecules modeled by a coupling parameter γ) on the order parameters. The coupling is found to increase the cluster order parameter significantly, suggesting enhancement in cluster formation, and also predicts a transition to a phase with weak nematiclike ordering above the nematic supercooling temperature.

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