Specific features of structural defects in twisted nematic liquid crystals under conditions of electrohydrodynamic instability

The influence of inhomogeneous boundary conditions (director orientation) on the specific features of the formation and evolution of structural defects in 90·-twisted nematic liquid crystals (twisted structures) is investigated in the regime of electrohydrodynamic instability. It is found that, unlike the domain structure of nematic liquid crystals with a planar orientation, in which defects with topological indices of ±1 are formed under conditions of electrohydrodynamic instability, the domain structure of twisted nematic liquid crystals contains both the above defects and defects with a topological index of 0. It is shown that structural defects with a topological index of 0 are stable and that the existence of these defects is associated with the axial velocity u_a of nematic liquid-crystal flow in the domains.