Heat capacity study of free-standing liquid crystal film.
01 January 1986
Results of the first heat capacity measurements of free-standing liquid-crystal films are presented. The nature of the smectic- A - hexatic-B transition of n-butyl-4' -n-hexyloxybiphenyl- 4-carboxylate (460BC) has been studied for films from about ten to thousands of smectic layers thick. Convolution fitting of thick film results have given values of the critical exponent and amplitude ratio consistent with bulk sample fitting results. Thin film heat capacity anomalies are asymmetric in shape, in contrast to results for thick films.