Studies of thin smectic C* films by X-ray reflectivity

O. Marinov*, E. Olbrich, G. Cohen, I. Entin, D. Davidov

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

The smectic order in thin and ultra thin films (150-600Å) of the chiral ferroelectric liquid crystal mixture ZLI-3654 is studied using the X-ray reflectivity technique. The spin cast films on various substrates (float glass, Si wafer, polymer coated glass, etc.) order spontaneously with smectic layering parallel to the substrate surface. A simple model which assumes a sinusoidal density modulation can describe well the experimental reflectivity profiles. The X-ray reflectivity provides a method to evaluate the phases of the structure factor. We demonstrate, for the first time, that is possible to extract the molecular tilt angle, α, in ferroelectric liquid crystals from X-ray reflectivity measurements of ultra thin films. The temperature dependence of the tilt angle in the smectic C* phase are almost independent of the film thickness (down to ∼200 Å) and are similar to those in the bulk.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)730-742
Number of pages13
JournalPhysica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
Volume200
Issue number1-4
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 Nov 1993

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