8. Textures of Liquid Crystals
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Textures of Smectic Liquid Crystals
Smectic A is a layered liquid crystal with the layer thickness of the order of one or two molecules size. The texture of the focal conic domains (FCDs) structure, most typical for SmA, can be observed if SmA is filled between substrates with planar orientation of the director (Fig.37). (a) (b) Figure 37. Textures of focal conic domains in smectic A The FCDs texture is created by layers folded around conjugated ellipse and hyperbola. Toric focal conic domains (TFCDs) are another type of cofocal domains where the ellipse is degenerated in a circle and the hyperbola is degenerated in a straight line (Fig.38). (a) (b) (a) (b) Figure 38. Textures of torical focal conic domains in smectic A: (a) arrays of TFCDs; (b) hexagonal packing of TFCDs of the same size; (c) TFCDs arranged in chains; (d) TFCDs in thin samples show polychromatic texture TFCDs textures can be generated in the SmA liquid crystal confined between boundaries with different orientation, planar and homeotropic.
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