Electro-osmosis in nematic liquid crystals.

Abstract

We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on a variational formulation of nematodynamics. We verify the model by comparing its predictions to the results of the experiments on the substrate-controlled liquid-crystal-enabled electrokinetics. In the experiments, a nematic liquid crystal confined to a thin planar cell with surface-patterned anchoring conditions exhibits electro-osmotic flows along the "guiding rails" imposed by the spatially varying director. Extending our previous work, we consider a general setup which incorporates dielectric anisotropy of the liquid-crystalline matrix and the full set of nematic viscosities.