Johnson PM, Olson DA, Pankratz S, Nguyen T, Goodby J, Hird M, Huang CC
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2000 May 22;84(21):4870-3. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.4870.
The unit cell structures of two ferrielectric liquid-crystal phases are determined from ellipsometric studies of freestanding films in a nondistorting rotatable electric field. A highly biaxial mode with out-of-plane distortions describes all of the data from two different compounds. Qualitative and quantitative features of the data rule out alternate models. We also present a detailed explanation for apparent inconsistencies between previous resonant x-ray and optical experiments.
