Session W21: Liquid Crystals III

2:30 PM–5:30 PM, Thursday, March 16, 2006
Baltimore Convention Center Room: 318

Sponsoring Unit: DFD
Chair: P. Collings, Swarthmore College

Abstract ID: BAPS.2006.MAR.W21.2

Abstract: W21.00002 : Using micro-focus synchrotron X-ray diffraction to probe textured liquid crystal samples

2:42 PM–2:54 PM

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Authors:

  Ronald Pindak
  Brandon Chapman
    (Brookhaven National Lab)

  Ruiting Wang
  Ishtiaque Syed
  Giovanni Carbone
  Charles Rosenblatt
    (Case Western Reserve Univ.)

  Michi Nakata
  Christopher Jones
  Noel Clark
    (Univ. of Colorado)

  Shin-Woong Kang
    (Kent State Univ.)

  Satyendra Kumar
    (National Science Foundation)

  Julie Cross
    (Argonne National Lab)

16 KeV X-rays from a bend magnet source at Sector 20 of the Advanced Photon Source were micro-focused by Kirkpatrick-Baez mirrors to a 14$\mu $m x 14$\mu $m cross-section and used in conjunction with an in-situ polarizing optical microscope to measure the diffraction from select areas in textured liquid crystal samples between thin glass plates. The technique will be described and its utility illustrated by three examples: (1) measuring the orientational deformation of smectic-A liquid crystal layers under the bend strain imposed by an AFM-scribed polymer alignment film, (2) mapping the concentration dependence of the liquid crystal phases exhibited by suspensions of short DNA oligomers of 6 to 16 base-pairs, and (3) selecting local monodomain regions from a globally unaligned conducting porphyrin-derivative sample for structural determination of its liquid crystal phases.

To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2006.MAR.W21.2