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Updated: Aug 6, 2026

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
Published on: October 31, 2019
Effects of disorder on a smectic--nematic phase transition
S Larochelle1, M Ramazanoglu, R J Birgeneau
1Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1A7.
Abstract:
Using x-ray scattering, we have studied the nematic to smectic- phase transition of the liquid crystal butyloxybenzilidene-octylaniline confined in an aerosil network. We find that the disorder introduced by the aerosil network destroys the long-range nature of the phase transition, and that the transition becomes similar to that observed in a finite-size system, with finite low-temperature correlation lengths of the ordered moments and a power-law behavior of the order parameter with respect to the reduced temperature observable in a limited temperature range. We also show evidence for a systematic evolution of the effective order parameter critical exponent beta with increasing disorder.
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