Nonplanar tilts in very thin smectic films of one liquid-crystal compound.
Surface effects cause tilted molecular arrangements in smectic layers near the surface of a free-standing liquid-crystal film in which the bulk of the film is in the smectic- A phase. One recent work has shown that the tilt directions in adjacent surface layers may be nonplanar. In this paper we study films with thicknesses of two to six smectic layers. Surface effects dominate in these very thin films. We show that the molecular tilts are nonplanar even in these very thin films.
McCoy
B K
BK
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Liu
Z Q
ZQ
Wang
S T
ST
Pan
Lidong
L
Wang
Shun
S
Goodby
J W
JW
Huang
C C
CC