Studies of Tails in Smectic Liquid Crystals. II. The Effect of a Butoxyethoxyethoxy Tail [1]

Abstract

In the previous paper [2], we studied the effect of a hybrid tail on the S*_c phase range of a three-ring core mesogen. It is concluded that the ether tail has a small number of contorted, but energetically favored conformers. The hybrid tail has a slightly contorted minimum energy conformation but the fluorine substituents have raised the energy of the particular deep levels available to the ether tail. In brief, the ether substituents enable gauche conformers, and the fluorine substituent prevent the gauche conformers from becoming overwhelming. In an extension to further demonstrate the validity of our theory, we have examined the effect of a butoxyethoxyethoxy tail (BO tail). It is expected that this tail should display a significant effect on the smectic mesophase, especially the S*_c phase because the rigidity of the tail increases with the extension of terminal carbon chain from two to four.

Key Words:

• Smectic liquid crystals
• butoxyethoxyethoxy tail