EPR Investigations on Molecular Orientation of Paramagnetic Liquid Crystals in a Surface-Stabilized Liquid Crystal Cell: Studies on a Smectic C or Chiral Smectic C Phase

Abstract

By electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy we investigated the molecular orientation in a surface-stabilized liquid crystal (LC) cell, which includes a racemic (±) or an enantiomerically enriched (S,S) paramagnetic LC, (2S,5S)-2,5-dimethyl-2-tridecyloxyphenyl-5-[4-(4-tridecyloxy-benzenecarbonyloxy)phenyl]pyrrolidine-1-oxy (2), whose spin source is fixed inside the rigid core. For both the smectic C (SmC) phase of (±)-2 and the chiral smectic C (SmC*) phase of (S,S)-2 in a surface-stabilized LC cell (antiparallel configuration, thickness of 4 µm), the profile of the observed g-value as a function of the angle between the applied magnetic field and the cell plane could be explained by the orientation model, where, with some disordering, the molecules align uniformly with the direction which tilts from the normal line of the smectic layer being orthogonal to the rubbing direction on the cell surface. We divided the effect from the disordering into two parts, one of which is concerning the direction of the molecular long axis and the other is concerning the rotation around the molecular long axis. As a result of the analysis, the SmC* phase gave quite lower ordering concerning the direction of the molecular long axis and a little lower ordering concerning the rotation around the molecular long axis than the SmC phase at the same temperature (80 °C). The obtained lower ordering in the SmC* phase is probably due to the chirality that would result in the formation of a helical superstructure in a bulky state.