Abstract
We study the effect of the divergence (surfacelike) and terms on stability of the uniform ground state of a nematic phase. It is shown that the term can effectively boost the action of the term. As a result, even if the two Ericksen stability conditions are satisfied, spontaneous deformations can occur in geometries with a sufficiently small volume-to-surface ratio. For a specific example, we show that this mechanism can destabilize the uniform planar director field in a thin nematic layer with planar anchoring and produce spontaneous periodic director modulation. The critical thickness below which the predicted modulated phase occurs is found to be where is the polar anchoring extrapolation length, and are the standard Nehring-Saupe elastic constants, and is the effective elastic constant of the layer.
- Received 9 June 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.61.3936
©2000 American Physical Society