Abstract
The influence of surface anchoring to the molecular reorientation in a smectic thin film transferred onto the substrate from the freely suspended film has been studied using ellipsometry method. The threshold electric field of electro-optical effect has been measured as a function of the scan rate of the triangular electric field and film thickness. The threshold field decreases with decreasing the scan rate of applied field, and it is essentially zero in the freely suspended film. On the other hand, it has existed even at extremely slow scan rate in the transferred film. The film thickness dependence of the threshold field, it has been found the threshold field in a freely suspended film is independent of the thickness, although in the transferred film, the threshold field increases with decreasing the film thickness. In the case of the transferred films, we found that the influence from the substrate is about 200 smectic layers.
