1A09 Layer by layer growth of tilted smectics : from monolayer to multilayer

Abstract

Dialkyl-terminated smectic compounds can spontaneously spread on water surface and form stable thin films at the bulk LC temperature. Unlike the most amphiphilic Langmuir monolayers, the hydrophobic LC films undergo the layer-by-layer growth under 2D compression, from monolayer to multilayer. In the growth process, there appear some remarkable orientational structures accompanied by a point defect, which directly reveals the relation between inter-layer orientational correlation, surface anchoring and intra-layer elasticity of typical SmC phase.