Issue 4, 2022

Angular structure factor of the hexatic-B liquid crystals: bridging theory and experiment

Abstract

We report results of X-ray scattering studies of the angular structure factor of liquid crystal hexatic-B films. According to the sixfold rotational symmetry of the hexatic-B phase, its characteristic scattering splits into six reflections. The shape of the radial and angular cross-sections of these reflections and their temperature evolution are analyzed. We find that over a wide temperature range of the hexatic-B phase existence the angular profiles of the in-plane X-ray scattering are well fitted by the Voigt function, which is a convolution of the Gaussian and Lorentzian functions. This result is supported by the known theoretical considerations of the hexatic structure factor below the smectic-hexatic phase transition temperature. Similar predictions for the angular shape of the hexatic peak in the vicinity of the smectic-hexatic phase transition temperature follow from the multicritical scaling theory of the hexatic-B phase in three dimensions. We find that the specific shape of the hexatic structure factor can be explained by the interplay of two distinct contributions to the free energy of the system, a liquid-like density term and a coupling term between the bond-orientational order and short-range density fluctuations.

Graphical abstract: Angular structure factor of the hexatic-B liquid crystals: bridging theory and experiment

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
08 Oct 2021
Accepted
28 Nov 2021
First published
22 Dec 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Soft Matter, 2022,18, 783-792

Angular structure factor of the hexatic-B liquid crystals: bridging theory and experiment

I. A. Zaluzhnyy, R. Kurta, M. Sprung, I. A. Vartanyants and B. I. Ostrovskii, Soft Matter, 2022, 18, 783 DOI: 10.1039/D1SM01446C

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