Issue |
EPL
Volume 109, Number 4, February 2015
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 46001 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Condensed Matter: Structural, Mechanical and Thermal Properties | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/109/46001 | |
Published online | 20 February 2015 |
Three-dimensional analysis of thermo-mechanically rotating cholesteric liquid crystal droplets under a temperature gradient
Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo - Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
(a) tyamamoto@daisy.phys.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Received: 9 December 2014
Accepted: 3 February 2015
We studied the rotational motion of cholesteric liquid crystal droplets under a temperature gradient (the Lehmann effect). We found that different surface treatments, planar and homeotropic anchoring, provided three types of droplets with different textures and geometries. The rotational velocity of these droplets depends differently on their size. Determining the three-dimensional structures of these droplets by the fluorescence confocal polarizing microscopy, we propose a phenomenological equation to explain the rotational behavior of these droplets. This result shows that the description by the Ericksen-Leslie theory should be valid in the bulk of the droplet, but we need to take into account the surface torque induced by temperature gradient to fully understand the Lehmann effect.
PACS: 61.30.-v – Liquid crystals / 05.70.Ln – Nonequilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics
© EPLA, 2015
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