Homologous birefringence

Figure 6. Birefringence in the nematic phase of six homologous 4-cyanophenyl-4-n-alkylbenzoates as function of the number of carbon atoms m in the alkyl chain (F/Tn-i=0.97). (Adapted from Rettig [63]).

The birefringence of the nematic phase in homologous series was first studied by Pelzl and Sackmann [9], and has been the subject of many subsequent papers [11,12,27, 34, 38,40, 44, 60, 61, 81-84]. As a representative example, in Fig. 6 the birefringence (A=589 nm) in the nematic phase of six homologous 4-cyanophenyl-4-n-alkyloxyben-zoates is plotted against the number of carbon atoms in the alkyl chain [63]. All values are related to the same reduced temperatures... 

---