ANCHORING AND ORIENTATIONAL WETTING TRANSITIONS OF CONFINED LIQUID-CRYSTALS

Deuterium magnetic resonance of cylindrically confined liquid crystals reveals a structural transition driven by a homeotropic-to-planar anchoring transition in the nematic phase and an orientational wetting (quasicomplete-to-partial) transition in the isotropic phase as the molecular length of the surface coupling agent is decreased. A simple phenomenological description reveals a weak positive surface order parameter in the homeotropic case and a negative one in the planar case. The absence of a symmetry breaking transition in the planar case is attributed to weak interfacial coupling.