Laser nanofluidics of liquid crystals

Several scenarios of formation of hydrodynamic flows in nanoscale planar-oriented liquid-crystal (POLC) channels are described by numerical methods within nonlinear generalization of the classical Ericksen–Leslie theory, which allows for consideration of thermomechanical contributions both to the expression for shear stress and the equation of entropy balance. A vortex flow can eventually be formed in a nanoscale POLC channel as a result of the formation of both temperature gradient $\nabla T$ (in the initially uniformly heated POLC channel under focused laser irradiation) and director field gradient $\nabla\mathbf{\hat {n}}$ (under a static electric field arising in the natural way at the LC phase/solid interface) and due to the interaction between $\nabla T$ and$\nabla\mathbf{\hat {n}}$.