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Characterization of the smectic-A-hexatic-B transition in 650BC by adiabatic scanning calorimetry

B Van Roie¹, K Denolf, G Pitsi

¹Laboratorium voor Akoestiek en Thermische Fysica, Departement Natuurkunde en Sterrenkunde, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200D, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium. Bert.VanRoie@fys.kuleuven.ac.be

The European Physical Journal. E, Soft Matter

|February 8, 2005

Abstract:

We investigated the smectic-A-hexatic-B (SmA-HexB) transition in the liquid-crystal n-hexyl-4'-n-pentyloxybiphenyl-4-carboxilate (650BC) with adiabatic scanning calorimetry. We were able to prove in a direct way that this transition is indeed very weakly first order, as was already suggested in the literature. The latent heat at the transition was determined to be deltaHL = 0.04 +/- 0.02 J/g. Our experiments confirm the high value for the heat capacity critical exponent earlier reported, yielding alpha = 0.64 +/- 0.05.

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