Orientational order in liquid crystal surface induced by evaporation of water droplet

TL;DR

This study investigates how water droplet evaporation influences the orientational order of liquid crystals on a substrate, revealing that solvent-substrate interactions at neutral anchoring strength induce specific patterned formations.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the role of solvent-substrate interactions in pattern formation during droplet evaporation on liquid crystal surfaces.

Findings

Pinning and depinning events create linear patterns.

Interfacial tension varies with liquid crystal orientation.

Ordered patterns emerge at neutral solvent-substrate interaction strength.

Abstract

The evaporation of a droplet induces variety of ordered patterns near the contact line between the droplet and a substrate. This pattern formation involves both the behavior of colloidal suspensions and interactions between a droplet and a substrate. Although studies on the effect of the behavior of colloidal suspensions on the deposition process have been actively conducted, studies on the effect of the interaction between a droplet and a substrate have not been actively conducted because the observation of the interaction is difficult owing to the lack of structural changes in the substrate by the interaction. In this study, we investigated the solvent-substrate interactions by using a water droplet and liquid crystals as a substrate, where the liquid crystals were placed on a glass slide. The orientation patterns of the liquid crystals were induced at the contact line between the water droplet and the liquid crystal and were observed using a polarized optical microscope. Pinning and depinning events were observed at a certain anchoring strength of the liquid crystal on the glass slide and formed linear patterns on the surface of the liquid crystal. Additionally, the interfacial tension between the water and liquid crystal slowly varied at this anchoring strength owing to the variation in the orientation of the liquid crystals. These results indicated that the evaporation-induced patterns appeared when the strength of the solvent-substrate interactions was neutral. The interaction between a droplet and a substrate is important for the fabrication of desired ordered patterns.