Eur. Phys. J. E (2004) 15: 225-230
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2004-10051-y

New investigation on the tetragonal liquid-crystalline phase or SmQ

¹ Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Bât 510, UMR 8502, Université Paris-Sud, 91405, Orsay Cedex, France
² Institute of Physical Optics, 23 vul. Dragomanova, 79005, Lviv, Ukraine
³ Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, CNRS, Université Bordeaux 1, Avenue Schweitzer, 33600, Pessac, France

^* e-mail: pansu@lps.u-psud.fr

Abstract

Chiral liquid crystals, for which twist and smectic order strongly compete, can exhibit complex architectures. This is the case of the SmQ phase which shows a high degree of 3D order (tetragonal or hexagonal) as well as a liquid signature. We have combined X-ray scattering and optical observations on a new compound exhibiting a SmQ phase to discriminate between the two models proposed by A.M. Levelut et al. (J. Phys. II 7, 981 (1997)) at the molecular level for the phase with the I4₁22 space group.