Abstract
We have conducted heat-capacity measurements near the smectic-A -smectic-C* phase transition in free-standing films of a chiral liquid-crystal compound. The heat-capacity behavior confirms the evolution of the transition in the interior layers from first to second order as a function of film thickness suggested earlier in tilt angle measurements. The asymmetry in the heat-capacity anomaly exhibits an interesting crossover in thinner films. We also observed the phase transitions leading to the crystallization to the tilted crystal-G phase in these films at lower temperatures. The surface ordering strength in these films is found to be much larger than that in other orthogonal-smectic films, which we speculate is due to the molecular tilt.
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