5,469 research outputs found
Piezoelectricity of Cholesteric Elastomers
We consider theoretically the properties of piezoelectricity in cholesteric
elastomers. We deduce using symmetry considerations the piezoelectric
contributions to the free energy in the context of a coarse-grained description
of the material. In contrast to previous work we find that compressions or
elongations of the material along the pitch axis do not produce a piezoelectric
response, in agreement with fundamental symmetry considerations. Rather only
suitable shear strains or local rotations produce a polarization. We propose
some molecular mechanisms to explain these effects.Comment: 11 pages, 1 Postscript figure; Late
Role of electrostatics in the texture of islands in free standing ferroelectric liquid crystal films
Curved textures of ferroelectric smectic C* liquid crystals produce space
charge when they involve divergence of the spontaneous polarization field.
Impurity ions can partially screen this space charge, reducing long range
interactions to local ones. Through studies of the textures of islands on very
thin free-standing smectic films, we see evidence of this effect, in which
materials with a large spontaneous polarization have static structures
described by a large effective bend elastic constant. To address this issue, we
calculated the electrostatic free energy of a free standing film of
ferroelectric liquid crystal, showing how the screened coulomb interaction
contributes a term to the effective bend elastic constant, in the static long
wavelength limit. We report experiments which support the main features of this
model
Dynamics of the molecular orientation field coupled to ions in two-dimensional ferroelectric liquid crystals
Molecular orientation fluctuations in ferroelectric smectic liquid crystals
produce space charges, due to the divergence of the spontaneous polarization.
These space charges interact with mobile ions, so that one must consider the
coupled dynamics of the orientation and ionic degrees of freedom. Previous
theory and light scattering experiments on thin free-standing films of
ferroelectric liquid crystals have not included this coupling, possibly
invalidating their quantitative conclusions. We consider the most important
case of very slow ionic dynamics, compared to rapid orientational fluctuations,
and focus on the use of a short electric field pulse to quench orientational
fluctuations. We find that the resulting change in scattered light intensity
must include a term due to the quasistatic ionic configuration, which has
previously been ignored. In addition to developing the general theory, we
present a simple model to demonstrate the role of this added term
- …