Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.500, 118-131, 2009
Hybrid Nematic Films: A Detailed Monte Carlo Investigation
We present detailed Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of a nematic film with antagonistic boundary conditions corresponding to homeotropic and homogeneous planar anchoring at the two surfaces. The simulations are based on the Lebwohl-Lasher lattice spin model with boundary conditions chosen to mimic the cell anchoring. We have investigated the model using both a standard Metropolis and a reweighting Monte Carlo method recently implemented for continuous systems.