  The influence of capillary flow on the alignment of the nematic liquid
crystal MBBA on fatty acid Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers was studied by optical
second-harmonic generation. The surface dipole sensitivity of the technique
allows probing the orientation of the first liquid crystal monolayer in the
presence of the liquid crystal bulk. It was found that capillary flow causes
the first monolayer of liquid crystal molecules in contact with the fatty acid
monolayer to be oriented in the flow direction with a large pretilt (78
degrees), resulting in a quasi-planar alignment with splay-bend deformation of
the nematic director in the bulk. itself is affected by the flow. The
quasi-planar flow-induced alignment was found to be metastable. Once the flow
ceases, circular domains of homeotropic orientation nucleate in the sample and
expand until the whole sample becomes homeotropic. This relaxation process from
flow-induced quasi-planar to surface-induced homeotropic alignment was also
monitored by SHG. It was found that in the homeotropic state the first nematic
layer presents a pretilt of 38 degrees almost isotropically distributed in the
plane of the cell, with a slight preference for the direction of the previous
flow.

Soft Condensed Matter