Dependence of film tension on the thickness of smectic films

The film tension tau of free standing S(A) films has been measured for films with thicknesses between 2 and 150 layers. There is a clear increase of tau with the thickness for very thin films and a nonlinear slower increase for high thickness. The nonlinearity depends on the amount of liquid crystal accessible to the meniscus of the film during the drawing process. Several models are discussed that describe these effects.