In:
Soft Matter, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Vol. 18, No. 1 ( 2022), p. 89-96
Abstract:
The spontaneous formation of chiral structures offers a variety of liquid crystals (LC) phases that could be further tailored for practical applications. In our work, the characteristic features of spiral ordering in the cholesteric phase of EZL10/10 LC were evaluated. To disclose resonant reflections related to a nanoscale helix pitch, resonant soft X-ray scattering at the carbon K edge was employed. The angular positions of the observed element-specific scattering peaks reveal a half-pitch of the spiral ordering p /2 ≈ 52 nm indicating the full pitch of about 104 nm at room temperature. The broadening of the peaks points to a presence of coherently scattering finite-size domains formed by cholesteric spirals with lengths of about five pitches. No scattering peaks were detectable in the EZL10/10 isotropic phase at higher temperatures. The characteristic lengths extracted from the resonant soft X-ray scattering experiment agree well with the periodicity of the surface “fingerprint” pattern observed in the EZL10/10 cholesteric phase by means of atomic force microscopy. The stability of LC molecules under the incident beam was proven by X-ray absorption spectroscopy in transmission geometry.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1744-683X
,
1744-6848
Language:
English
Publisher:
Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
Publication Date:
2022
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2191476-X
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