Thermodynamically Anchoring-Frustrated Surface to Trigger Bulk Discontinuous Orientational Transition

Surface-specific liquid crystal (LC) nanostructures provide a unique platform for studying surface-wetting phenomena and also for technological applications. The most important studies on LC properties are related to bulk alignment, surface anchoring, and so on. Here, we study an LC system with a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) on a perfluoropolymer-coated substrate, in which a discontinuous bulk orientational transition has recently been found....