Bilayered smectic phase polymorphism in the dipolar Gay–Berne liquid crystal model

Bilayered smectic phase polymorphism in the dipolar Gay-Berne liquid crystal model.

We present computer simulations of the Gay-Berne model with a strong terminal dipole. We report the existence of different stable antiferroelectric interdigitated bilayered phases in this model with diverse in-plane organization. The occurrence of these phases depends crucially on the value of the molecular elongation kappa. For kappa=3 we find an interdigitated bilayered smectic-A phase (absen...

Smectic-A and smectic-C phases and phase transitions in 8S5 liquid-crystal-aerosil gels.

High-resolution x-ray scattering studies of the nonpolar thermotropic liquid crystal 4-n-pentylphenylthiol-4'-n-octyloxybenzoate (8S5) in aerosil gel nanonetworks reveal that the aerosil-induced disorder significantly alters both the nematic to smectic-A and smectic-A to smectic-C phase transitions. The limiting 8S5 smectic-A correlation length follows a power-law dependence on the aerosil dens...

Phase diagram of a frustrated smectic liquid-crystal system and the absence of the incommensurate smectic-Ai2 phase.

Pattern formation in smectic liquid crystal lms

Many initially uniform systems can develop regular patterns of spatial structure when driven su ciently far from equilibrium. In their simplest forms, these patterns resemble soft condensed phases. Pattern formation takes place via instabilities that are the nonequilibrium equivalent of phase transitions. We rst provide a general overview of the study of pattern formation in uid dynamical syste...

Molecular model for de Vries type smectic- A -smectic- C phase transition in liquid crystals.

We develop both phenomenological and molecular-statistical theory of smectic- A -smectic- C phase transition with anomalously weak smectic layer contraction. Using a general mean-field molecular model, we demonstrate that a relatively simple interaction potential suffices to describe the transition both in conventional and de Vries type smectics. The theoretical results are in excellent agreeme...