Orientational order and dynamics of a nematic liquid crystal in porous media

We report on orientational order and dynamics of a nematic liquid crystal confined in porous silica. 13C NMR lineshape is used as a fingerprint for this study. A procedure based on exchange of non-coupled sites is implemented in order to obtain the corresponding local order parameter S and the characteristic time for molecular reorientation τ. Our results evidence that in the nematic phase, S decreases when confinement increases. By means of Langevin dynamics simulations of confined liquid crystals, we show that this behavior is due to topological defects, originated by the absorbed-layers phenomenon as a consequence of the strong anchoring of these molecules on silica surfaces.