Influence of substrate microrelief on the Fréedericksz transition in a thin nematic cell.
An effect of substrate surface regular wavy microrelief on the Freedericksz transition in a thin homeotropically aligned nematic cell near the smectic-A-nematic second-order transition temperature is theoretically investigated. It is shown that because of the suppression of an interfacial smectic-A structure, the Fréedericksz critical field for the cell with substrates having a sufficiently sharp microrelief should be significantly lower than that for the cell of the same thickness, but with perfectly flat substrates.
Mirantsev
L V
LV
Institute of the Problems of Mechanical Engineering, Academy of Sciences of Russia, St. Petersburg 199178, Russia.