High-resolution calorimetric study of phase transitions in chiral smectic-C liquid crystalline phases.
We carried out an improved characterization of phase transitions among chiral smectic-C subphases observed for various antiferroelectric liquid crystals by precise heat capacity measurements. It was found that the phase transitions are intrinsically first order exhibiting a remarkable heat anomaly which involves little pretransitional thermal fluctuation and a finite thermal hysteresis. On the other hand, we also noticed that the critical point of the smectic-C(α)(*)-smectic-C* transition is induced by the destabilization of the smectic-C(α)(*) phase which couples with the fluctuation associated with the smectic-A-smectic-C(α)(*) phase transition.
Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, O-okayama, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan.
Y
Y
Sasaki
K V
KV
Le
S
S
Aya
M
M
Isobe
H
H
Yao
C C
CC
Huang
H
H
Takezoe
K
K
Ema