Soft mode ferroelectric liquid crystal

Ferroelectric liquid crystals where a continuous symmetry group is broken at Tc and the doubly degenerate relaxational soft mode of the high-temperature phase splits below Tc into an amphtudon -type soft mode and a symmetry restoring Goldstone (i.e., phason ) mode [e.g., p-decyloxybenzylidene p -amino-2-methylbutylcinnamate (DOBAMBC)]. 

Nevertheless, several authors, in studying SmC polyacrylates [22] or SmC poly-siloxanes [ 14,41,67], have observed the two expected collective relaxations in ferroelectric liquid crystals, namely the Goldstone mode and the soft mode. These two relaxations occur at frequencies lower than 10 Hz. 

FIGURE 35 Dependence of soft mode relaxation frequency at the transition Sm C -Sm A on the molecular weight of ferroelectric liquid crystals (low mass as well as polymeric). 

Gouda, F., Skarp, K., Andersson, G., Lagerwall, S. T., Stebler. B., and Helgee, B., Soft mode response and rotational viscosity of a ferroelectric liquid crystal polymer, Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., 34, 5653-5657 (1995). 

The thermally excited cone motion, sometimes called the spin mode (this is very similar to the spin wave motion in ferromag-nets), or the Goldstone mode, is characteristic of the nonchiral SmC phase as well as the chiral SmC phase, but is of special interest in the latter because in the chiral case it couples to an external electric field and can therefore be excited in a controlled way. This Goldstone mode is of course the one that is used for the switching mechanism in surface-stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal devices. The tilt mode, often, especially in the SmA phase, called the soft mode (although hard to excite in comparison with the cone mode, it may soften at a transition), is very different in character, and it is convenient to separate the two motions as essentially independent of each other. Again, this mode is present in the nonchiral SmA phase but cannot be detected there by dielectric methods, because a coupling to an electric field requires the phase to be chiral. In the SmA phase this mode appears as the electroclinic effect. 

Pal Majumder T, Mitra M, Roy SK (1994) Dielectric relaxation and rotational viscosity of a ferroelectric liquid crystal mixture. Phys Rev E 50(6) 4976-4800 Petit M, Daoudi A, Ismaili M, Buisine JM (2006) Electroclinic effect in a chiral smectic-A liquid crystal stabilized by an anisotropic polymer network. Phys Rev E 74 061707 Petit M, Hemine J, Daoudi A, Ismaili M, Buisine JM, Da Costa A (2009) Effect of the network density on dynamics of the soft mode and the Goldstone modes in short-pitch ferroelectric liquid crystals stabihzed by an anisotropic polymer network. Phys Rev E 79 031705 Pirs J, Blinc R, Marin B, Pirs S, Doane JW (1995) Polymer network volume stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal displays. Mol Cryst Liq Cryst 264 155-163 Polyanin AD, Zaitsev VF (2003) Handbook of exact solutions for ordinary differential equations, 2nd edn. Chapman Hall, Boca Raton... 

For chiral nematic liquid crystals, the method outlined previously for a planar nematic cell has been shown to be quite effective. For smectic-A the preparation method is similar to that for a homeotropic nematic cell. In this case, however, it helps to have an externally applied field to help maintain the homeotropic alignment as the sample (slowly) cools down from the nematic to the smectic phase. The cell preparation methods for a ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC), smectic-C for surface stabilized FLC (SSFLC) operation, is more complicated as it involves surface stabi-lization. f On the other hand, smectic-A (Sm-A ) cells for soft-mode FLC (SMFLC) operation are easier to prepare using the methods described above. ... 

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