Orientational order of a ferroelectric liquid crystal with small layer contraction

Authors

• Rafal Korlacki, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
• Vitaly P. Panov, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Atsuo Fukuda, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Jagdish K. Vij, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
• Christopher M. Spillmann, Naval Research Laboratory
• Jawad Naciri, Naval Research Laboratory

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2010

Citation

Physical Review E 82, 031702 (2010)

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.82.031702

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.82.031702

Comments

Copyright 2010 by the American Physical Society

Abstract

We present spectroscopic and optical studies of a non-layer-shrinkage ferroelectric liquid crystal DSiKN65. The orientational order parameters S, measured with respect to the smectic layer normal using IR spectroscopy on a sample aligned homeotropically, does not exhibit any significant variation between the smectic-A* and smectic-C* phases. In contrast the birefringence of a planar homogenous sample abruptly increases at the smectic-A* to smectic-C* transition. This suggests a general increase in the orientational order, which can be described by the orientational order parameters S' defined with respect to the director. Simultaneous increase of S' and the director tilt θ may explain the low shrinkage of smectic layers, which is consistent with recent theoretical models describing the smectic-A* to smectic-C* transition for such materials.