Azimuthal Anchoring Energy Using the Splay Deformation in a Polarization Grating Configuration

Abstract

We propose a simple method of measuring the azimuthal anchoring energy of liquid crystals by splay deformation in a binary polarization grating based on the linearly distorted director approximation. Under crossed polarizers, the splay-distorted regions near domain boundaries produce dark stripes whose widths represent distortion lengths, corresponding to the extrapolation lengths. The azimuthal anchoring energy was directly derived from the splay-distortion length. In addition, since the distortion lengths were measured at all domain boundaries, the azimuthal anchoring energy based on the statistical consideration could be estimated for a single sample.