Optical Microscopy Observations and Construction of Dupin Cyclides at the Isotropic/Smectic A Phase Transition

In this work, we are interested in the nucleation of bâtonnets at the Isotropic/Smectic A phase transition of 10CB liquid crystal. Very often, these bâtonnets are decorated with a large number of focal conics. We present here an example of a bâtonnet obtained by optical crossed polarized microscopy in a frequently observed particular area of the sample. This bâtonnet presents bulges and one of them consists of a tessellation of ellipses. These ellipses are two by two tangent, one to each other, and their confocal hyperbolas merge at the apex of the bâtonnet. We propose a numerical simulation with Python software to reproduce this tiling of ellipses as well as the shape of the smectic layers taking the well-known shape of Dupin cyclides within this particular bâtonnet area.

Huge Dielectric Constants of the Ferroelectric Smectic-A Phase in Bent-Shaped Dimeric Molecules

We present the dielectric relaxation properties of the ferroelectric smectic-A (SmAPF) phase formed by the mixture of bent-shaped dimeric molecules, α,ω-bis(4-alkoxyanilinebenzylidene-4′-carbonyloxy)pentanes with different alkyl chain lengths. The SmAPF phase shows...

Enhancement of Luminescence Dissymmetry Factor in Nano-Segregated Phase Generated by Phase Separation between Helical Nanofilaments and Liquid-Crystalline Smectic A Phase

Although several methods exist for the synthesis of circularly polarized luminescent (CPL) materials, the methods are extremely complex and tedious. In recent years, the chiral host-achiral luminescent guest method and the achiral host-achiral luminescent guest method have been employed to fabricate CPL materials; however, the main disadvantage of the latter is the small luminescence dissymmetry factor (glum) that limits the practical applications of the method. Therefore, this study reports on the enhancement of glum in a nano-segregated phase system, generated by the phase separation between helical nanofilaments (HNFs; originating from an achiral bent-core molecule) and a liquid-crystalline (LC) smectic A (SmA) phase (originating from an achiral rod-like mesogen). The observed glum value in the nano-segregated phase between the HNFs and LC SmA phase was larger than that in the nano-segregated phase between the HNFs and LC nematic (N) phase. The enhancement of the glum value was attributed to the order parameter (S) of the dye molecules in the SmA phase being larger than that in the N phase. Therefore, we concluded that the S value of the fluorescent dye molecules, doped into the embedded LC phase between the HNFs, strongly influenced the glum value.