Simulation and theory of hybrid aligned liquid crystal films

We present a study of the effects of nano-confinement on a system of hard Gaussian overlap particles interacting with planar substrates through the hard-needle–wall potential, extending earlier work by two of us [D. J. Cleaver and P. I. C. Teixeira, Chem. Phys. Lett. 338, 1 (2001)]. Here, we consider the case of hybrid films, where one of the substrates induces strongly homeotropic anchoring while the other favours either weakly homeotropic or planar anchoring. These systems are investigated using both Monte Carlo simulation and density-functional theory, the latter implemented at the level of Onsager’s second virial approximation with Parsons-Lee rescaling. The orientational structure is found to change either continuously or discontinuously depending on substrate separation, in agreement with earlier predictions by others. Theory is seen to perform well in spite of its simplicity, predicting the positional and orientational structure seen in simulations even for small particle elongations.