Violation of Ericksen Inequalities in Lyotropic Chromonic Liquid Crystals

By analyzing elastic theory for nematic liquid crystals, we distinguish three regimes of elastic constants. In one regime, the Ericksen inequalities are satisfied, and the ground state of the director field is uniform. In a second regime, certain necessary inequalities are violated, and the free ene...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of elasticity 2023-07, Vol.153 (4-5), p.599-612
Main Authors: Long, Cheng, Selinger, Jonathan V.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biomechanics
Classical and Continuum Physics
Classical Mechanics
Elastic analysis
Elastic properties
Engineering
Free energy
Inequalities
Liquid crystals
Materials Science
Mathematical Applications in the Physical Sciences
Nematic crystals
Theoretical and Applied Mechanics
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:By analyzing elastic theory for nematic liquid crystals, we distinguish three regimes of elastic constants. In one regime, the Ericksen inequalities are satisfied, and the ground state of the director field is uniform. In a second regime, certain necessary inequalities are violated, and the free energy is thermodynamically unstable. Between those possibilities, there is an intermediate regime, where the Ericksen inequalities are violated but the system is still stable. Remarkably, lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals are in the intermediate regime. We investigate the nonuniform structure of the director field in that regime, show that it depends sensitively on system geometry, and discuss the implications for lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals.
ISSN:0374-3535
1573-2681
DOI:10.1007/s10659-022-09899-z