AIP Advances (Oct 2015)

New surface order reconstruction induced by electric field application in a nanoconfined HAN cell with a topological defect

  • Yongchao Wang,
  • Xuan Zhou,
  • Wenjiang Ye,
  • Zhidong Zhang

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4934672
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 10
pp. 107127 – 107127-10

Abstract

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In accordance with the 2D Landau–de Gennes tensorial formalism, we investigated the influence of an applied electric field E parallel to the defect line on the position and structure of a nematic line defect with topological charge M = − 1/2 in a hybrid alignment nematic cell with different cell gaps d. A new type of surface order reconstruction occurs in the cell as E is increased. Regardless of d, two biaxial layers can be achieved near the top and bottom substrates of the cell with different E values. This process involves double eigenvalue exchange across the cell. However, the structural transition processes vary for different d values.