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Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
Main-chain smectic liquid-crystalline polymers as randomly disordered systems
A S Muresan1, B I Ostrovskii, A Sánchez-Ferrer
1FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics, Kruislaan 407, 1098 SJ, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Abstract:
We report a high-resolution X-ray lineshape study of main-chain smectic polymers. The results indicate that the layer ordering differs fundamentally from the algebraic decay typical for other smectic liquid-crystalline systems. The lineshapes are best described by broad squared Lorentzians indicating some form of short-range correlations. However, several higher harmonics are observed, which excludes simple liquid-like short-range order. This behaviour is tentatively attributed to a random field of defects associated with entangled hairpins in the main-chain polymer structure.
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