Structure and relaxation processes of an anisotropic molecular fluid confined into 1D nanochannels

Abstract

Structural order parameters of a smectic liquid crystal confined into the columnar form of porous silicon are studied using neutron scattering and optical spectroscopic techniques. It is shown that both the translational and orientational anisotropic properties of the confined phase strongly couple to the one-dimensional character of the porous silicon matrix. The influence of this confinement induced anisotropic local structure on the molecular reorientations occurring in the picosecond timescale is discussed.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to J.-M. Zanotti and B. Frick, for expert advice on the neutron scattering experiments and fruitful discussion, and also M. Stchakovsky for precious help on spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements.