ABSTRACT
We investigated the temperature dependence of the splay elastic constant (K11) and rotational viscosity (γ1) of a binary liquid crystal system comprising 5-trans-n-butyl-2-(4-isothiocyanatophenyl)-1,3-dioxane (4DBT) and 4-cyano-4′-n-undecyloxy-biphenyl (11OCB), exhibiting induced nematic phase. Both the splay elastic constant and rotational viscosity increased following lowering of the temperature. In the vicinity of smectic A-nematic (SmA-N) transition, both the relaxation time and rotational viscosity exhibited a strong pretransitional behaviour. The critical exponent (ν) presented here led to valuable qualitative information about the pre-transitional behaviour of the rotational viscosity data near the SmA-N phase transition. The extracted ν values ranging between 0.336 and 0.352 are in fair agreement with those predicted in the de Gennes model as compared to that by the mean-field model.
GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT
![](/cms/asset/8ed0cdfd-76c5-4182-ba11-a42adc3eb663/tlct_a_1172356_uf0001_oc.jpg)
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.