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Chiral nematic liquid crystals exhibit both a helical planar ground statewith uniform twist and a metastable defect-rich focal conic texture, and can beswitched between the two microstructures via application of transient voltagepulses. In this work, we model these electrically-induced texture transitionsusing finite difference methods to examine resulting microstructural evolution,the first time this transition has been modeled in three dimensions. We analyzethe planar to focal conic, focal conic to planar, and planar to planartransitions depending on voltage pulse magnitude. We consider first the specialcase of chiral nematics with matched twist and bend elastic constants. Resultsshow a variety of defect-rich morphologies in the disordered focal conictexture and demonstrate a fast recovery of the planar ground state on switchingwithout formation of a transient planar state. We evaluate both texturemicrostructural evolution as well as cell capacitance. Beyond the singleelastic constant approximation, we evaluate the planar to transient-planar aswell as the planar to Helfrich-deformed transitions in simulations of a liquidcrystal compound with different elastic constants. Our methods represent theevolving microstructure as a uniaxial director field, with relaxation dynamicscalculated from a tensor representation so that half charge disclinationdefects are not suppressed. We discuss potential application of thesecomputationally efficient three-dimensional modeling approaches for design andoptimization of chiral nematic devices.

Three-dimensional modeling of chiral nematic texture evolution under electric switching