Eur. Phys. J. E 6, 157-161 (2001)

Optical activity measurements in the smectic blue phases

Eric Grelet¹, Peter J. Collings², Min-Hui Li³ and Huu-Tinh Nguyen<sup>4

1</sup>  Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, UMR 8502, Université Paris-Sud, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France
²  Department of Physics & Astronomy, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081, USA
³  Institut Curie-Section de Recherche, UMR 168, 11 rue Pierre et Marie Curie, F-75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
⁴  Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, UPR 8641, Avenue Albert Schweitzer, F-33600 Pessac, France

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(Received 25 May 2001)

Abstract
Optical activity measurements have been performed on the smectic blue phases ( ), which are a new kind of chiral liquid crystal. exhibit both three-dimensional orientational order, like the classical blue phases, and smectic positional order. Thus, they can be viewed as the three-dimensional counterpart of the twist grain boundary phases. A comparison with the optical activity of the classical blue phases is carried out, and an estimation of the lattice parameter is reported for the first time.

PACS
61.30.-v - Liquid crystals.
78.20.Ek - Optical activity.


© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001