Dodge Mohammad Reza, Petschek Rolfe G, Rosenblatt Charles, Neubert Mary E, Walsh Margaret E
Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7079, USA.
Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2003 Sep;68(3 Pt 1):031703. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.68.031703. Epub 2003 Sep 11.
Quasielastic light scattering measurements were performed in the nematic phase of mixtures consisting of the calamitic mesogen 8OCB doped with small concentrations of the bent-core molecule P-7PIMB. It was found that the regular part of the bend elastic constant decreases strongly with dopant concentration X. Close to the nematic-smectic-A phase transition temperature, the divergent part of the bend elastic constant, which is proportional to the bare correlation length xi(0)(||) parallel to the layer normal, also decreases rapidly with X. The effect of the dopant on xi(0)(||) is examined in brief theoretically.
