Horizontal chevron domain formation and smectic layer reorientation in SmC* liquid crystals stabilized by polymer networks

Abstract

The influence of a polymer network, stabilizing an initial texture of horizontal chevron geometry, on the in-plane smectic C* layer reorientation process is studied for different applied electric field conditions. As expected, the reorientation of smectic layers is strongly slowed down and eventually suppressed by the network, even at rather low monomer concentrations. Polymer network formation in a uniformly reoriented smectic layer state reveals that the network acts in two ways: first it gives a biased elastic torque counteracting a field of such symmetry as to cause a change from the templated layer direction; second it introduces an increased effective viscosity counteracting the reorientation in both directions. The behaviour of samples stabilized by two different kinds of polymer networks, created in between the smectic layers (intra-layer) and across them (inter-layer), is then investigated and discussed.