Unexpected electric-field-induced antiferroelectric liquid crystal phase in the SmC$\upalpha$\ast temperature range and the discrete flexoelectric effectстатья
Статья опубликована в высокорейтинговом журнале
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 11 ноября 2019 г.
Аннотация:The unique nanometer-sized helical structure in SmC∗α may sometimes evolve continuously to the micrometersized one in SmC∗; conceivably ferroelectric SmC∗α is to be unwound by an applied electric field. By drawing electric-field-induced birefringence contours in the field-temperature phase diagram and by studying the superlattice structure of the field-induced subphase with resonant x-ray scattering, we established that an applied field unexpectedly stabilizes the well-known antiferroelectric four-layer biaxial subphase as well as the other prototypal ferrielectric three-layer one in the SmC∗α temperature range; the effective long-range interlayer interaction due to the discrete flexoelectric effect actually plays an important role in stabilizing not only the biaxial subphases but also the optically uniaxial SmC∗α subphase, contrary to the notion that the competition between the direct interactions of the nearest-neighbor layers and those of the next-nearest-neighbor layers should be required for the nanometer-sized helical structure.