Tilted Smectic Phases in Langmuir Monolayers

Abstract

New tilted smectic phases in Langmuir monolayers composed of FLC materials are reported in this paper. We found a mixture of several FLC materials take 2D SmC phase on the water surface at room temperature, showing similar schlieren texture to bulk SmC and nematics. Under compression, unlike the ordinary Langmuir monolayers, the film exhibits first-order monolayer-by-monolayer growth of the film thickness on the water surface, eventually resulting in multilayer-structures instead of collapsing.