Abstract
We present a new high energy resonant x-ray scattering study of a brominated chiral liquid crystal material exhibiting antiferro, ferri and ferroelectric smectic C phases. The absorption K-edge of bromine is at much higher energy (13.49 keV) than the sulfur K-edge (2.47 keV) which should enable a wider variety of experimental geometries. A weak resonant signal is detected on free standing films in the SmCA* phase only. Interestingly, the signal is stronger in binary mixtures with a bromine free thiobenzoate compound. This observation suggests that most chiral liquid crystal structures could be studied by resonant scattering after incorporation of a molecule bearing a resonant atom as a probe. Resonant x-ray diffraction profiles are also calculated for some recently proposed distorted clock models of the 4-layer ferrielectric phases. Finally, the influence of defects is investigated.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1-18 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Ferroelectrics |
| Volume | 244 |
| Issue number | 1-4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2000 |
| Event | Seventh International Conference on Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals - Darmstadt, Ger Duration: Aug 29 1999 → Sep 3 1999 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Goodby, P. Mach and R. Pindak. The resonant diffraction experiments benefitted from financial support from ESRF, from CNRS (GDR 606 “Cristaux liquides en geometrie confinee“) and from the NSF-INT 9815859 and NSF-DMR 9901739. We are grateful to Professor Haase and the organisers of the FLC99 conference for giving us the opportunity to present this work.