Photoinduced Interactions in Thin Films of Azo Dyes and Planar-Aligned Nematic Liquid Crystal

Properties of surface anchoring depend on the absorbed exposure energy and various potential interactions associated with liquid crystal and azo dye layers. In this study, we investigate a model of dispersion, steric and photoinduced interactions with the goal of providing a qualitative and quantitative description of orientationally ordered hard uniaxial liquid crystals and azo dye molecules. By using the Onsager theory, we estimated the effect of excluded volume. Typical repulsive potentials between liquid crystal and azo dye molecules are displayed graphically. The presence of statistical dispersion in molecular alignment of liquid crystals leads to potential wells in dipole–dipole interactions. Our mean field theory investigation of dipole–dipole interactions shows that the anchoring free energy is governed by the net interaction energy associated with the averaged dipole moments of liquid crystal and azo dye molecules, photoaligned surface dipole moments, and local charge densities. We also use the Fokker–Planck equation to show that rotational diffusion is described by the effective mean field potential, which includes photoinduced and van der Waals interactions. Our findings underscore the potential of mean field theory for intermolecular couplings in photoaligned surfaces, opening up new pathways of molecular design for a broad range of parameters.