Flow behavior of liquid crystals in the slit cell

Abstract

In this study, we mainly investigated the flow behavior of nematic and smectic liquid crystals. Mechanical rubbing, chemical modification and photo-alignment methods were applied to make up different kinds of surface orientation on the substrates. After these various treatments, the flow behavior of liquid crystals in slit cell having parallel, perpendicular or homeotropic orientation on substrates was investigated. It was observed that the value of apparent viscosity ζ becomes higher in the order of ηpara, ηperpen and ηhomeo in the nematic phase. Furthermore, on the mechanical parallel and perpendicular rubbing layer, the effect of electric field on the flow behavior of liquid crystals was examined. We found that the apparent viscosity becomes higher with an increase of the value of electric field.