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Updated: May 25, 2026

Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
Rigid probe solutes in a smectic-A liquid crystal: an unconventional route to the latter's positional order
Maria Enrica Di Pietro1, Giorgio Celebre, Giuseppina De Luca
1Dipartimento di Chimica, Università della Calabria, Campus di Arcavacata, Via Pietro Bucci Cubo 12C, I-87036 Rende, Cosenza, Italy.
Abstract:
Biphenylene and pyrene were dissolved in the nematic and smectic-A phases of the liquid crystal 4,4'-di-n-heptyl-azoxybenzene and the orientational order parameters of both solutes and solvent measured via proton and deuteron nuclear-magnetic-resonance spectroscopy. This new data set was then merged with the one previously obtained, formed by 4,4'-di-chloro-benzene and naphthalene as solutes in the same solvent, and the resulting overall data set analyzed with a statistical thermodynamic density-functional theory to provide positional-orientational distribution functions of the various solutes along with the smectic solvent's positional order parameters.
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