Nematic wetting layers in liquid crystal colloids

Abstract

We first review the method of treating nematic wetting of planar surfaces following the approach introduced by Sheng. We present a phase diagram, which in the present form we have not found in the original literature. Then we consider spherical geometries of arbitrary radii, such as colloidal particles, and introduce an appropriate method for handling wetting in curved geometries. We find that a prewetting transition for high curvatures or small particle radii no longer occurs.