Examination of Near Surface Alignment in Tilted Smectic Liquid Crystal Filled Cells

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Abstract
The structure of the near surface director profile in a tilted smectic liquid crystal cell is of interest to the understanding of surface alignment. Here this is investigated for low and high surface tilt SiO alignments using the technique of evanescent field polarization conversion. Comparison between the observed conversion and that predicted theoretically allows the near surface structure to be probed. For low surface tilt a boundary layer is found over which reorientation to the surface alignment direction takes place. For high tilt alignment the liquid crystal surface has large twist angles, with only a very thin layer of reorganization to the surface alignment direction still present.