Measurement of azimuthal anchoring energy in nematic liquid crystals by transmitted and reflected light methods

Abstract

In a recent paper Yokoyama [Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst. 165, 265 (1988)] showed that a correct thermodynamic definition of the anchoring energy at the interface between a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) and another medium requires the preliminary choice of a ‘‘Gibbs dividing surface.’’ As a consequence of this, the measured value of the anchoring energy coefficient can depend on which method is used to perform the experiment. This dependence probably explains the large discrepancies that are often reported in the literature between anchoring energy coefficients measured on the same substrate by different authors. To test this important point the anchoring energy coefficient at a SiOx nematic interface has been measured by using two different methods at the same time: a reflection light method and a transmitted light method. Both these methods have been already used in the literature. In this paper the latter method is analyzed in detail and it is shown that its accuracy is greatly reduced by the presence of spurious bulk contributions. To increase accuracy, a new experimental procedure is proposed that exploits the differing dependence of surface and bulk contributions on the intensity of the magnetic field. This new method allows one to separate bulk and surface contributions without using fitting procedures. Therefore both the anchoring energy and information on the bulk director distortion can be directly obtained from the experiment. The transmitted light and the reflected light methods are used simultaneously to measure the azimuthal anchoring energy coefficient at the SiOx nematic interface on the same NLC sample at the same temperatures. A satisfactory agreement between the anchoring energy coefficients measured by the two methods is found.