X-RAY STUDIES OF THE SURFACE AND BULK STRUCTURE OF THE ISOTROPIC AND NEMATIC PHASE OF A LYOTROPIC LIQUID-CRYSTAL

We have used x-ray specular reflection to study the structure of the air-liquid-crystal interface of the lyotropic liquid crystal formed from binary mixtures of cesium perfluoro-octanoate (CsPFO) and water. In the isotropic phase the surface is coated with a monolayer of CsPFO separated by layers of water from one or more smetic bilayers of CsPFO. As for the case of thermotropic liquid crystals, the isotropic-to-nematic phase transition has no effect on the surface structure, and as the temperature is lowered towards the nematic-to-smectic-A transition temperature, the number of surface-induced smectic layers increases dramatically (e.g., approximately 100 layers were observed). Theoretical modeling of the reflectivity excludes the possibility that the surface bilayers are arrays of micelles. X-ray scattering from critical smectic short-range order in the bulk, studied by tuning the spectrometer away from the specular condition, indicates that the scattering is fundamentally different from short-range smectic order in thermotropic systems.