Microscopic surface order, nematics

Microscopic Surface Order of Nematic Liquid Crystals... 

This question can be answered by considering the experiments, where liquid crystals have been spread across solid crystal surfaces [15]. Macroscopic observations under a polarizing microscope reveal that crystal surfaces do orient nematic liquid crystals, which leads to the conjecture that there may be microscopic positional and orientational order at a crystal-liquid crystal interface. Indeed, this local interfacial order can be revealed in experiments with a Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM), first perfoi med by Foster and Frommer [16]. An example of an STM image of a crystal-nematic liquid crystal interface is shown in Fig. 1.4 for the case of 8CB on graphite. One can... 

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