F. Barmes¹ and D.J. Cleaver²

¹Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Mol´eculaire, 46, all´ee d’Italie, 69007 Lyon, France.
²Materials and Engineering Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield S1 1WB, United Kingdom.

We study the microscopic basis of bistable switching of a confined liquid crystal via Monte Carlo simulations of hard pear-shaped particles. Using both dielectric and dipolar field couplings to this intrinsically flexoelectric fluid, it is shown that pulsed fields of opposing polarity can be used to switch between the vertical and hybrid aligned states. Further, it is shown that the field susceptibility of the surface polarisation, rather than the bulk flexoelectricity, is the main driver of this switching behaviour.

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