Investigations of nanoscale helical pitch in smectic-C*alpha and smectic-C* phases of a chiral smectic liquid crystal using differential optical reflectivity measurements.
Differential optical reflectivity (DOR) was used to study the temperature dependence of the short helical pitch in freestanding films of a liquid crystal compound. The experimentally measured DOR signal was fitted using Berreman's 4 x 4 matrix method to get the pitch value in the smectic-C*alpha (sMC*alpha) phase. The results show continuous evolution of the pitch between the smectic-C*alpha and sMC*alpha phases. In sMC*alpha, the pitch decreases as temperature increases and is found to level off at 16+/-1 smectic layers at the sMC*alpha to smectic-A* transition.
Panov
V P
VP
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
McCoy
B K
BK
Liu
Z Q
ZQ
Vij
J K
JK
Goodby
J W
JW
Huang
C C
CC