Quasi-Stable configurations of liquid crystals in polyhedral geometries

Majumdar, Apala ; Newton Christopher, Newton ; Robbins, Jonathan ; Zyskin, Maxim

HP Development Company

关键词: liquid crystals;    bistability;    topological classification;   

RP-ID  :  HPL-2003-66

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

美国|英语

来源: HP Labs

【 摘 要 】

Bistable director configurations are of great interest in liquid crystal display technologies, offering the possibility of higher resolution combined with reduced power consumption. One way to achieve such bistability is to use the cell geometry. As part of an ongoing programme to analyze quasi-stable configurations of liquid crystals in polyhedral geometries, we have constructed a topological classification scheme of unit-vector fields in convex polyhedra subject to tangential boundary conditions, and have carried out numerical and analytical calculations of the energy and stability properties of certain test configurations contained in a unit cube. Notes: Apala Majumdar, Jonathan Robbins and Maxim Zyskin, Department of Mathematics, University of Bristol, BS8 1TW 13 Pages