Self-organized wrinkling patterns of a liquid crystalline polymer in surface wetting confinement

Self-organized wrinkling patterns of a liquid crystalline polymer, dictated by the chemico-physically anisotropic nature of surface wettability, are demonstrated in confined geometries. The symmetry of the geometrical constraints of the confinement primarily governs the periodic wrinkling patterns of such a polymer in the wetting region. In a circular geometry, the number of the radial domains with multi-fold symmetries is linearly proportional to the radius of the confinement. The physical origin of the wrinkling process comes from the periodic bend-splay distortions through the relaxation of the curvature elasticity.