Temperature-driven motion of liquid crystals confined in a microvolume
- Saint Petersburg Institute for Machine Sciences, The Russian Academy of Sciences, Saint Petersburg 199178 (Russian Federation)
The theoretical description of the reorientational dynamics in microsized liquid crystal (LC) cell, where the nematic sample is confined by two horizontal and two lateral surfaces, under the influence of a temperature gradient ∇T, caused by a laser beam focused on the bounding surface with and without the orientational defect, whereas the rest of the bounding surfaces of the LC cell are kept at constant temperature, has been presented. Our calculations, based on the appropriate nonlinear extension of the classical Ericksen-Leslie theory, show that due to interaction between ∇T and the gradient of the director field ∇n-circumflex in the LC sample, a thermally excited vortical fluid flow is maintained in the vicinity of the orientational defect, with the motion in the positive sense (clockwise) around the middle part of that defect. In the case of the same LC cell, but without the orientational defect on the lower hotter boundary, the heating regime can also produce the vortical flow in the vicinity of the lower boundary, but with the motion in the negative sense (anti-clockwise) around the middle part of that boundary. At that, the second vortex is characterized by a much slower speed than the vortical flow in the first case.
- OSTI ID:
- 22257205
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Fluids (1994), Vol. 25, Issue 11; Other Information: (c) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-6631
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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