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Updated: Sep 23, 2026

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals
Published on: August 15, 2018
Emergence of molecular tilt in a ferroelectric smectic liquid crystal with broken director-inversion symmetry
Aitor Erkoreka1, Mauricio Vera-Arévalo2,3, Alberto Concellón2,3
1University of the Basque Country, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Technology, EHU, Bilbao, Spain.
Abstract:
The origin of some mesophases of the ferroelectric nematic realm is not yet well understood. In this work, we study the highly polar liquid crystal MIO, a close structural analog of the prototypical ferroelectric nematogen DIO, which exhibits a ferroelectric smectic A to ferroelectric smectic C (SmA_{F}-SmC_{F}) phase transition. Calorimetric, dielectric, and light-scattering experiments reveal that it is a second-order phase transition with mean-field behavior and is driven by the softening of the tilt elastic constant accompanied by the divergence of the amplitude of the associated dielectric mode.
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