Wide-angle neutron scattering study of the unusual nematic-nematic transition in liquid crystal dimers

DOI

An intriguing unknown variant of the nematic liquid-crystal phase (Nx) has been discovered first in a class of main-chain polymers, and later in LC dimers connected via an alkylene spacer. A well-defined first order transition separates the high-temperature N phase from the low-T Nx. It has recently been recognised that the Nx phase exhibits one of the fastest linear switching modes in any LC. The nature of the Nx phase is poorly understood. The diffuse X-ray scattering shows change at the transition, but the contribution of mesogen, spacers and end-tails cannot be resolved. We propose to carry out neutron scattering on magnetically aligned LC dimers with perdeuterated alkylene spacers to separate the scatter of the spacer and mesogen in thetwo N phases.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.24089992
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/24089992
Provenance
Creator Dr Goran Ungar; Mr Xiangbing Zeng; Dr Ann Terry; Mr Hao Liang Dong; Mr Zhihong Chen; Miss Jie Zhang
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2015
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2012-12-11T10:35:11Z
Temporal Coverage End 2012-12-18T04:00:15Z