Experimental design to measure the anchoring energy on substrate surface by using the alternating-current bridge

The anchoring property of the substrate surface of liquid crystal cells plays an important role in display and nondisplay fields. This property directly affects the deformation of liquid crystal molecules to change the phase difference through liquid crystal cells. In this paper, a test method based on the alternating-current bridge is proposed to determine the capacitance of liquid crystal cells and thus measure the anchoring energy of the substrate surface. The anchoring energy can be obtained by comparing the capacitance-voltage curves of twisted nematic liquid crystal cells with different anchoring properties in experimental and theoretical results simulated on the basis of Frank elastic theory. Compared with the other methods to determine the anchoring energy, our proposed method requires a simple treatment of liquid crystal cells and allows easy and high-accuracy measurements, thereby expanding the test ideas on the performance parameters of liquid crystal devices.