Electro-osmosis in nematic liquid crystals

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive mathematical model for electro-osmosis in nematic liquid crystals, incorporating dielectric anisotropy and viscosities, and validates it against experimental observations of electrokinetic flows.

Contribution

It extends previous models by including dielectric anisotropy and full viscosities, providing a more complete description of nematic electrolyte electro-osmosis.

Findings

Model accurately predicts electro-osmotic flows in nematic liquid crystals.

Experimental results confirm the model's validity.

Flow patterns align with surface-patterned anchoring conditions.

Abstract

We derive a mathematical model of a nematic electrolyte based on a variational formulation of nematodynamics. Extending our previous work, we consider a general setup which incorporates dielectric anisotropy of the liquid-crystalline matrix and the full set of nematic viscosities. We verify the model by comparing its predictions to the results of the experiments on the substrate-controlled liquid-crystal-enabled electrokinetics. In the experiments a nematic liquid crystal confined to a thin planar cell with surface-patterned anchoring conditions exhibit electro-osmotic flows along the "guiding rails" imposed by the spatially varying director.