Orientational ordering in the chiral smectic-C*FI2 liquid crystal phase determined by resonant polarized x-ray diffraction

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2001 Nov;64(5 Pt 1):050702. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.64.050702. Epub 2001 Oct 18.

Abstract

High-resolution resonant polarized x-ray diffraction experiments near the sulfur K edge have been performed on free-standing liquid crystal films exhibiting the chiral smectic-C*FI2 phase. It is widely accepted that this phase has a four-layer repeat unit, but the internal structure of the repeat unit remains controversial. We report different resolved features of the resonant x-ray diffraction peaks associated with the smectic-C*FI2 phase that unambiguously demonstrate that the four-layer repeat unit is locally biaxial about the layer normal and that the measured angle, describing the biaxiality, is in good agreement with optical measurements.