Properties of the static NMR response of a confined thin nematic film of 5CB-d2 under crossed electric and magnetic fields: theory and experiments

Peculiarities in the Director Reorientation and the NMR Spectra Evolution in a Nematic Liquid Crystals under the Effect of Crossed Electric and Magnetic Fields

The illustrative description of the field-induced peculiarities of the director reorientation in the microsized nematic volumes under the effect of crossed magnetic B and electric E fields have been proposed. The most interesting feature of such configuration is that the nematic phase becomes unstable after applying the strong E . The theoretical analysis of the reorientational dynamics of the director field provides an evidence for the appearance of the spatially periodic patterns in response to applied large E directed at an angle α to B . The feature of this approach is that the periodic distortions arise spontaneously from a homogeneously aligned nematic sample that ultimately induces a faster response than in the uniform mode. The nonuniform rotational modes involve additional internal elastic distortions of the conservative nematic system and, as a result, these deformations decrease of the viscous contribution U vis to the total energy U of the nematic phase. In turn, that decreasing of U vis leads to decrease of the effective rotational viscosity coefficient γ eff ( α ) . That is, a lower value of γ eff ( α ) , which is less than one in the bulk nematic phase, gives the less relaxation time τ on ( α ) ∼ γ eff ( α ) , when α is bigger than the threshold value α th . The results obtained by Deuterium NMR spectroscopy confirm theoretically obtained dependencies of τ on ( α ) on α .

Deuterium NMR investigations of field-induced director alignment in nematic liquid crystals

There have been many investigations of the alignment of nematic liquid crystals by either a magnetic and/or an electric field. The basic features of the important hydrodynamic processes for low molar mass nematics have been characterized for the systems in their equilibrium and non-equilibrium states. These have been created using electric and magnetic fields to align the director and deuterium nuclear magnetic resonance ((2)H NMR) spectroscopy has been used to explore this alignment. Theoretical models based on continuum theory have been developed to complement the experiments and found to describe successfully the static and the dynamic phenomena observed. Such macroscopic behaviour has been investigated with (2)H NMR spectroscopy, in which an electric field in addition to the magnetic field of the spectrometer is used to rotate the director and produce a non-equilibrium state. This powerful technique has proved to be especially valuable for the investigation of nematic liquid crystals. Since the quadrupolar splitting for deuterons observed in the liquid crystal phase is determined by the angle between the director and the magnetic field, time-resolved and time-averaged (2)H NMR spectroscopies can be employed to investigate the dynamic director alignment process in a thin nematic film following the application or removal of an electric field. In this article, we describe some seminal studies to illustrate the field-induced static and dynamic director alignment for low molar mass nematics.

Macroscopic order in a nematic liquid crystal: Perturbation by spontaneous director fluctuations

The dynamic alignment of the nematic director by near-orthogonal electric and magnetic fields has been investigated. The intermediate states during the relaxation process were found, with the aid of time-resolved deuterium NMR spectroscopy, to be markedly nonuniform. The macroscopic order was perturbed, although the initial and final states of the director appear to be essentially uniform. However, the initial state does have a profound influence on the uniformity of the director in the intermediate states. We have developed a fundamental model based on the effect of spontaneous director fluctuations to explain these unusual NMR observations.