Nanostructured Surfaces: Scientific and Optical Device Applications

Abstract

Surfactant and polymer-coated substrates may be patterned on microscopic and nanoscopic length scales by the stylus of an atomic force microscope. The resulting easy axes control the director orientation, facilitating both scientific studies and technological devices that were not possible using previous techniques. In this talk I will present a review of work from my laboratory, performed in collaboration with Milind P. Mahajan, Wen Bing, Ghanshyam P. Sinha, and Rolfe G. Petschek, along with colleagues L.V. Mirantsev (St. Petersburg, Russia) and Jong-Hyun Kim and Hiroshi Yokoyama (Tsukuba, Japan). Work includes a number of optical gratings for beam steering applications, gray scale images, anchoring strength studies, effects of controlled surface roughness on smectic order, and nanoscopic elasticity and anchoring effects on the nematic-isotropic phase transition.