2011/04/28 by S. Fujii, S Fujii, S. Komura +5 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Conic section #Elastic modulus #Elasticity (physics) #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Liquid crystal #Material Dynamics and Properties #Rheology #Scaling #Surface tension #Thermotropic crystal #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0953-8984/23/23/235105
14 pages, 7 figures, accepted for publication in JPCM
arxiv created 2011/04/28 · openalex publication_date 2011/05/25 · arxiv updated 2015/05/28 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We study the elastic properties of thermotropic smectic liquid crystals with focal conic domains (FCDs). After the application of the controlled preshear at different temperatures, we independently measure the shear modulus G' and the FCD size L. We find out that these quantities are related by the scaling relation G' ≈ γ(eff)/L, where γ(eff) is the effective surface tension of the FCDs. The experimentally obtained value of γ(eff) shows the same scaling as the effective surface tension of the layered systems √(KB), where K and B are the bending modulus and the layer compression modulus, respectively. The similarity of this scaling relation to that of the surfactant onion phase suggests an universal rheological behavior of the layered systems with defects.