TY - JOUR
T1 - Brownian motors in the photoalignment of liquid crystals
AU - Palffy-Muhoray, P.
AU - Kosa, T.
AU - E.W., Weinan
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge support from AFOSR under grant No. F49620-95-1-0065 (W.E) and from the NSF under ALCOM grant No. 89-DMR20147 and AFOSR MURI grant No. F49620-17-1-0014 (P.P-M.). We are grateful to Prof. A.C. Eringen for the organization of and the opportunity to participate in the Eringen Medal Symposium in honor of P.G. de Gennes.
PY - 2002/8
Y1 - 2002/8
N2 - Light can change the orientation of liquid-crystal molecules. Usually, the torque that causes the reorientation originates in angular-momentum transfer from the radiation field to the material. If a small amount of dichroic dye is dissolved in the liquid crystal, a light-induced torque can appear essentially without the transfer of angular momentum from light. We show that, in such cases, the dye molecules act as light-driven molecular motors which, via an orientational Brownian ratchet mechanism, transfer angular momentum, which originates at the cell walls, to the liquid crystal. Understanding the details of this mechanism is important for applications ranging from flat-panel displays to optomechanical transducers.
AB - Light can change the orientation of liquid-crystal molecules. Usually, the torque that causes the reorientation originates in angular-momentum transfer from the radiation field to the material. If a small amount of dichroic dye is dissolved in the liquid crystal, a light-induced torque can appear essentially without the transfer of angular momentum from light. We show that, in such cases, the dye molecules act as light-driven molecular motors which, via an orientational Brownian ratchet mechanism, transfer angular momentum, which originates at the cell walls, to the liquid crystal. Understanding the details of this mechanism is important for applications ranging from flat-panel displays to optomechanical transducers.
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U2 - 10.1007/s003390201321
DO - 10.1007/s003390201321
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0036681112
VL - 75
SP - 293
EP - 300
JO - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
JF - Applied Physics A: Materials Science and Processing
SN - 0947-8396
IS - 2
ER -