Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
addClaim

Thermodynamic discontinuity in evaporating thin solvated nematics

Authors: Prateek Chowdhury; Debdip Bhandary; Abir Ghosh;

Thermodynamic discontinuity in evaporating thin solvated nematics

Abstract

Self-organized patterns of nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) are indispensable in sensing and opto-electronics due to their intricate molecular sensitivities. A molecular-scale investigation of solvated thin NLC films reveals that concurrent discontinuities in NLC–NLC interaction-driven thermodynamic properties, mobility, and rheological responses engender the incipient and necessary conditions for dewetting. This spontaneous dewetting is followed by self-organized morphological evolution, which proceeds through concentration-dependent distinct pathways. These discontinuities arise from an entropic landscape generated by a sufficient fraction of solvent molecules—an effect absent in pure thin NLC films, overcoming a long-standing challenge in achieving controlled self-organized patterns in such systems. The magnitude of these discontinuities governs film instability and the resulting morphological transitions with varying molecular orientations, consistent with the developed continuum-scale theory and previous experimental observations. This continuum framework, developed for the first time for solvated anisotropic systems, incorporates anisotropic contributions of NLC molecules derived from molecular-scale energetics and accurately recovers the characteristic pattern length scales in agreement with experiments. This enables the establishment of a multi-scale, unified framework, as deployed in this study, for solvent evaporation-induced nano/microfabrications.

Related Organizations
  • BIP!
    Impact byBIP!
    selected citations
    These citations are derived from selected sources.
    This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    0
    popularity
    This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
    influence
    This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
    Average
    impulse
    This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
    Average
Powered by OpenAIRE graph
Found an issue? Give us feedback
selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
0
Average
Average
Average
Upload OA version
Are you the author of this publication? Upload your Open Access version to Zenodo!
It’s fast and easy, just two clicks!