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We present Monte Carlo simulations of liquid-crystalline material confined toa nanoscopic slit-pore. The simulations are carried out under isothermalconditions in a specialized isostress ensemble in which N fluid molecules areexposed to a compressional stress acting on the fluid in directions parallelwith the substrate planes. Fluid-fluid and fluid-substrate interactions aremodelled as in our previous work [M. Greschek et al., Soft Matter, 2010,DOI:10.1039/B924417D). We study several anchoring mechanisms at the solidsubstrate by introducing an anchoring function (0<g(u)<1) that depends on theorientation of a fluid molecule relative to the substrate plane; g(u)"switches" the fluid-substrate attraction on or off. Here we focus on variousheterogeneous (i.e., hybrid) anchoring scenarios imposing different anchoringfunctions at the opposite substrates. As in our previous study we compute theisostress heat capacity which allows us to identify states at which theconfined fluid undergoes a structural transformation. The isotropic-nematictransformation turns out to be nearly independent of the specific anchoringscenario. This is because the director in the nematic phase assumes a directionthat is a compromise between the directions enforced by the competing anchoringscenarios at either substrate. On the contrary, at lower compressional stressesmolecules prealign in specific directions that depend on details of theanchoring scenario.

Frustration of nanoconfined liquid crystals due to hybrid substrate anchoring