Measurement of the Anticlinic Coupling Coefficient of an Antiferroelectric Liquid Crystal

  • Kang, Dae-Seung (Department of Electrical Engineering, Soongsil University) ;
  • Kimura, Munehiro (Department of Electrical Engineering, Nagaoka University of Technology)
  • Published : 2002.08.21

Abstract

In this paper, we report a novel way to evaluate the anticlinic interlayer coupling coefficient U between smectic layers of an antiferroelectric liquid crystal, by utilizing a small field-induced perturbation of the molecular orientation. U was found to exhibit an unusual "S-shaped" dependence on temperature, with values ranging between $0.4{\times}10^4$ and $0.4{\times}10^{-1}$ erg $cm^{-3}$ over a 10$^{\circ}C$ temperature range below smectic A-smectic $C_A$ phase transition temperature. The results are good agreement with estimates for U based upon the threshold field for the onset of solitary waves, and provide strong supporting the low-field regime for the single Fourier component model.

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