Carrier transport simulation in a model liquid crystalline system with the biaxial Gay-Berne potential.

In this paper, we performed carrier transport simulation to understand the unusual temperature dependence of the carrier mobility observed in nematic liquid crystals. For this purpose, we made a model liquid crystalline system consisting of biaxial Gay-Berne particles, and then we simulated hopping transport between these particles. The hopping rate was formulated suitably for the biaxial Gay-Berne particles based on the investigation of the electronic overlaps between actual aromatic molecules. The carrier transport simulation was performed by master equation method on the model system prepared by N-P-T ensemble Monte Carlo simulation. We reproduced gradual mobility increase in the nematic phase as a result of the change in the short range molecular order.

Carrier transport simulation of anomalous temperature dependence in nematic liquid crystals.

We investigated the carrier transport phenomena in model liquid crystalline systems, which were constructed on the basis of the Gay-Berne potential and Monte Carlo calculation. The carrier transport was analyzed under the condition that the molecular arrangement in the system was fixed and thermally activated carriers were transported by hopping in the system. The carrier transport simulation was performed by Monte Carlo method using Miller-Abrahams hopping ratio. By these calculations, we reproduced the experimental results of the electronic conduction in nematic liquid crystals.

Three relaxation processes from an electric-field-induced polar structure in a columnar liquid crystalline urea derivative.

We have studied the polarization relaxation process after removing an applied electric field in the columnar hexagonal phase of N,N'-bis(3,4,5-trihexadecyloxyphenyl)urea by means of second-harmonic generation (SHG), switching current, and texture observation. Transient SHG and current associated by sudden field change show polarization switching associated with a molecular reorientation of about a few ms depending on the field strength. Furthermore, the texture observation reveals a column undulation process during 10 s to 1 min. The size of the polar domains was estimated to be 160 molecules by analyzing the field dependence of the SHG signal intensity on the basis of an Ising model.

Electric-field-induced polar biaxial order in a nontilted smectic phase of an asymmetric bent-core liquid crystal.

A polarization reorientation process has been studied by means of optical second-harmonic generation in an optically uniaxial smectic phase of an asymmetric bent-core liquid crystal. A nontilted polar smectic order with a biaxial order is induced by applying an electric field to the uniaxial nonpolar smectic phase. This phenomenon was well simulated by the two-dimensional Langevin process, i.e., electric-field-induced continuous molecular reorientation against thermal agitation. The simulation suggests that about 200s of molecules form a polar domain and cooperatively respond to the applied field. The existence of the polar domains and their reorientation are consistent to the dielectric measurement; a high dielectric constant of about 60 at the kHz range is markedly suppressed by applying a bias field.