title: Structures and phase transitions in thin free standing films of an antiferroelectric liquid crystal.
abstract: The premises of a discrete mean-field model for polar smectic liquid crystals are tested by analyzing the ellipsometric experiments on two, three, and four-layer freestanding films of MHPOBC. The measured temperature dependences of the ellipsometric parameters in a weak dc external field are compared to the predictions of a simple clock model. A very good quantitative agreement is found indicating an odd-even effect: XY structures are stable for odd and Ising-like structures for an even number of layers.
authors.affiliation: J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Conradi
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cepic
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Copic
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Musevic
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003460:Crystallization / Q000379:methods*; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000379:methods*; D008280:Magnetics; D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D008956:Models, Chemical; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D044367:Phase Transition; D012996:Solutions / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D008567:Membranes, Artificial; D012996:Solutions