Synclinic–anticlinic phase transition in tilted organosiloxane liquid crystals

Abstract

In this paper, we considered the case of low molecular weight bimesogenic liquid crystals containing a siloxane moiety as the central part of their molecular architecture. For some of these compounds, both ferro- and antiferroelectric mesophases are present. Two distinct smectic structures can develop as a function of temperature, the first one at high temperature corresponding to a synclinic molecular arrangement with elongated molecules, and the second one at lower temperature corresponding to an anticlinic organisation with V-shaped molecules. Numerical calculations of the energy of different conformations of these bimesogenic molecules presented here indicate that there is no difference in energy between V-shaped and linear conformations regardless of the number of silicon atoms in the siloxane moiety. Thus a microscopic model of the synclinic–anticlinic phase transition is developed where the driving force is indeed a free energy difference between the two phases, and not a difference of energy between the V-shaped and linear conformations. The model explains why the anticlinic SmCA phase is more stable than the synclinic SmC one, why the synclinic SmC phase is generally the higher temperature one, and why in some organosiloxane materials the anticlinic SmCA phase is not present.