Planar-fingerprint transition in a thermoreversible liquid crystalline gel

Titelangaben

de Lózar, Alberto ; Schöpf, Wolfgang ; Rehberg, Ingo ; Lafuente Cerdá, Óscar ; Lattermann, Günter:
Planar-fingerprint transition in a thermoreversible liquid crystalline gel.
In: Physical Review E. Bd. 71 (2005) Heft 5 . - 051707.
ISSN 1550-2376
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.71.051707

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Abstract

A thermoreversible (physical) gel consisting of a nematic liquid crystal mixed with a small quantity of a chiral organogelator is investigated in the planar configuration. The response of the system to an external electric field reveals multistability within a small hysteresis. The relaxation of the liquid crystal under this field is characterized by two different time scales: a fast one that is connected to the tilt of the director field, and a slow one that describes the reorientation of the chiral structure. In the first case, the relaxation is nonexponential and can be described by a Kohlrausch-Williams-Watts law with a stretching parameter of 0.5.