M. N. Krakhalev, A. P. Gardymova, A. V. Emel'yanenko, Jui-Hsiang Liu, V. Ya. Zyryanov, “Untwisting of the helical structure of cholesteric droplets with homeotropic surface anchoring”, Pis'ma v Zh. Èksper. Teoret. Fiz., 2017, Volume 105, Issue 1,Pages <nobr>43

This article is cited in 13 papers

MISCELLANEOUS

Untwisting of the helical structure of cholesteric droplets with homeotropic surface anchoring

M. N. Krakhalev^ab, A. P. Gardymova^b, A. V. Emel'yanenko^c, Jui-Hsiang Liu^d, V. Ya. Zyryanov^a

^a Kirensky Institute of Physics, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
^b Institute of Engineering Physics and Radio Electronics, Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
^c Faculty of Physics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
^d Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

Abstract: Cholesteric droplets dispersed in a polymer with homeotropic surface anchoring are studied. A director configuration with the bipolar distribution of the axis of the helix is formed in droplets. The untwisting of the helical structure (i.e., an increase in the pitch of the helix) is experimentally observed at a decrease in the size of droplets. This dependence is analyzed for liquid crystal droplets with various concentrations of the chiral addition. A proposed empirical relation describes well the correlation of the helix pitch and the size of droplets in the studied samples.

Received: 10.11.2016
Revised: 29.11.2016

DOI: 10.7868/S0370274X17010118