Liquid Crystal-Solid Interface Structure at the Antiferroelectric-Ferroelectric Phase Transition

TL;DR

This study uses Total Internal Reflection to investigate the molecular surface structure of a liquid crystal near its phase transition, revealing how surface order relates to bulk phases through analytical modeling.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of surface molecular organization at the antiferroelectric-ferroelectric transition using TIR and an exact analytical model.

Findings

Ferroelectric surface order is expelled during the bulk transition.

Conditions for ferroelectric order at the surface of an antiferroelectric are identified.

Analytical solutions effectively interpret surface molecular organization.

Abstract

Total Internal Reflection (TIR) is used to probe the molecular organization at the surface of a tilted chiral smectic liquid crystal at temperatures in the vicinity of the bulk antiferroelectric-ferroelectric phase transition. Data are interpreted using an exact analytical solution of a real model for ferroelectric order at the surface. In the mixture T3, ferroelectric surface order is expelled with the bulk ferroelectric-antiferroelectric transition. The conditions for ferroelectric order at the surface of an antiferroelectric bulk are presented.