Optical studies on two tilted smectic phases of meta‐substituted three‐ring liquid crystal compounds

Abstract

Null transmission ellipsometry and depolarized reflected light microscopy have been performed on freestanding films of two achiral meta‐substituted three‐ring compounds. These compounds exhibit two different tilted smectic phases, SmC₁ and SmC₂. Our studies confirmed previous results obtained from another achiral meta‐substituted three‐ring compound that the SmC₁ and SmC₂ phases are SmC and SmC_A, respectively.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Solid State Chemistry Program under Grant No. DMR‐0106122. X.F.H. wishes to acknowledge financial support from the Stanwood Johnston Memorial Fellowship, University of Minnesota.

Notes

In this discussion, we ignore the effect of longitudinal polarization on the laser beam.