Nematic smectic-C phase transition in the polymeric liquid crystal C-6 polysiloxane: A high resolution x-ray study

Ehud Nachaliel*, Edward N. Keller, Dan Davidov, Herbert Zimmermann, Moshe Deutsch

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

We report on the first x-ray scattering measurements of pretransitional smectic-C fluctuations in the nematic phase of a side-chain polymeric liquid crystal, C-6 polysiloxane. The data are well described by the mean-field theory of Chen and Lubensky suggesting that the mesogenic side groups are only weakly coupled to the polymeric backbone. Because of disorder in the polymer backbone, the correlation lengths, in the vicinity of the nematic-smectic-C phase transition, are weak functions of temperature and their magnitudes are smaller than those of conventional monomeric liquid crystals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)896-899
Number of pages4
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume58
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 1987

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