Smectic and Lamellar Liquid Crystals

Illxistration of deformation of layered structures, (a) Layer splay (director bend) (b) twist (c) layer bend (director splay). It can be seen that only the layer bend leaves the layer spacing constant. 

Three-dimensional Fluorescent Confocal Polarizing Microscopic (FCPM) pictures of focal conic defects of SmA phase with homeotropic alignment (upper row), and their graphical illustration (bottom row), (a) Horizontal cross section (along the substrates) (b) vertical cross section. 

SmA with focal conics, (a) Photo courtesy of O. Lavrentovich (b) focal conic texture coexisting with Batonnets when SmA forms directly from the isotropic phase. Bar 100 im. 

Illustration of edge dislocations induced by a bend stress, due to constant layer thickness requirement. A closed loop T enclosing two elementary edge dislocations in an area of bend in 

Integrating the director field along a loop T that contains edge dislocations 

---