Anchoring and orientational wetting of nematic liquid crystals on semi-fluorinated self-assembled monolayer surfaces

¹ Centre for Self-Organising Molecular Systems, University of Leeds Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
² Base Technology Research Centre, Seiko-Epson Co - Nagano-ken, Japan
³ University of Twente, MESA Research Institute and Faculty of Chemical Technology, MTP - P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands
⁴ Department of Chemistry, University of Houston Houston, TX, 77204-5641, USA

Corresponding author: s.d.evans@leeds.ac.uk

Received: 19 November 2001
Accepted: 14 May 2002

Abstract

We demonstrate that it is possible to achieve exceptionally fine control over the anchoring of liquid crystals via the use of semi-fluorinated self-assembled monolayers of varying spacer length. We use this approach to map the detailed shape of an anchoring transition surface in thermodynamic phase space and to explore the links between anchoring and orientational wetting phenomena. These results allow one to design a substrate that will place a standard liquid-crystal film arbitrarily close to an anchoring transition between homeotropic and planar anchoring.