Effective Anchoring Energy of Nematic Liquid Crystals on Stripe Anchoring Patterns

Anchoring energy is a key factor that controls the response of liquid crystals to an external field. Nonuniform alignment in orientation and anchoring energy is now being developed to realize smart functions like multistability. Here, we numerically calculate the effective anchoring energy of a stripe anchoring pattern. We use the concepts of extrapolation length and virtually extended cell gap by the extrapolation length to calculate the distortion of the director. We formulated an empirical equation that shows the effective anchoring energy. The effective anchoring energy determined by this equation is close to the calculated effective anchoring in a wide range.