Effects of doping on an unusual smectic- C*alpha-smectic-C*FI2-smectic-C* phase sequence.
The compound 10OHF has a partially inverted phase sequence, unique among the series of nOHF homologous compounds and all other known liquid crystals, with the smectic-C*FI2 (SmC*FI2) phase occurring at higher temperature than the smectic-C* (SmC*) phase. We present ellipsometric data to identify the phase sequences of 9OHF, 10OHF, 11OHF, and 12OHF. Binary mixtures of 10OHF with C11, a compound with the typical phase sequence among the smectic phases, show that the unusual phase sequence of 10OHF stabilizes upon mixing and that SmC*FI2 predominates over SmC* throughout the entire mixing phase diagram. In thin films of some mixtures, surface interactions induce a reentrant SmC*FI2-SmC*-SmC*FI2 transition in the rest of the film.
McCoy
B K
BK
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA and Department of Mathematics and Physics, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California 91702, USA.
Liu
Z Q
ZQ
Wang
S T
ST
Pan
Lidong
L
Wang
Shun
S
Nguyen
H T
HT
Pindak
R
R
Huang
C C
CC