Surface-induced reduction of twisting power in liquid-crystal films

Complex superstructures in chiral liquid crystals: surface-induced helix destruction

The influence of surface anchoring in thin chiral ferroelectric liquid crystals on helical superstructures imposed onto smectic layers is studied by means of a simple model allowing surface anchoring through the self-depolarization effect. It is shown that, for narrow temperature ranges close to temperatures of tilting phase transitions, these interactions can destroy helices, leading to the emergence of complex, intertwined undulatory, and helical substructures with different, mainly short, pitches. Regions with both undulated and helical orderings are demonstrated to reveal different sizes and random distributions along the smectic layer normal. Assuming values of material model parameters, typical for liquid crystals being close to tilting phase transitions, the free energy of thin helical smectic liquid crystal systems is determined as a function of two variables. One of them specifies the helix period of the appropriate bulk system (unperturbed by surfaces), while the second describes the interplay between the surface anchoring and the liquid crystal elasticity. It is shown that the free energy exhibits a very complicated behavior within variable regions for which the regular helices or complex superstructures occur. The resulting sensitivity of the free energy on changes of these variables corresponds to the appearance of a large variety of complex superstructures with coexisting helices of different periods. This gives an explanation of the occurrence of intricate superstructures and provides new insight into the interplay between molecular and surface interactions near the tilting phase transitions.

Effect of intralayer inhomogeneity on helical superstructures of liquid crystals

A mechanism to form distorted helical structures in ferroelectric liquid crystals is presented. It is shown that the deformation of helical interlayer structures of thin smectic systems can be considered as a direct consequence of the surface-induced spatial inhomogeneity in the distribution of the azimuthal molecular orientation within smectic layers. The intralayer azimuthal nonuniformity occurring in helical phases is argued to generate a local depolarizing electric field of the strength varying not only in smectic layers but also between the layers. The resulting modulation of the depolarization level in the direction of helical axes is shown to lead to a distortion of helices. Using a simple model, including the depolarization interaction, it is demonstrated that the degree of the helix deformation strongly varies as parameters of the model are changed. It is also shown that strong deformations of extremely short helices, found for appropriate values of the parameters, reflect nonuniformity of helicoidal superstructures of respective smectic subphases in real liquid crystalline systems.

Surface-aligning field in smectic liquid-crystal films

Two modified mean-field J(1)-J(2) models are studied to explain the surface reduction of twisting power in the helical smectic-C*(α) phase in free-standing liquid crystal films. Profiles of the surface interlayer interaction are calculated from the experimental results. The calculations reveal the existence of a strong surface field and indicate that the surface field is the reason for the observed reduced twisting power near the surface region. Our results provide a quantitative study of the interlayer interactions through surface effects in smectic liquid crystals.