Orientational dependence of the potential of mean force for a discotic liquid crystal near a substrate

In this work we calculate the potential of mean force for a discotic liquid crystal (DLC) confined in a slab geometry. We have set the reaction coordinate as the distance between a DLC test particle with a fixed orientation and a wall with face-on anchoring. Five different orientations of the DLC test particle are explored, which correspond to parallel and perpendicular orientations with regard to the anchoring promoted by the walls, and three intermediate orientations between the parallel and perpendicular configurations. The potential of mean force reflects the strong effect of the system's anisotropy: particles with the wrong orientation are energetically penalised whilst the particles with the correct orientation are favoured.