Abstract
We report experimental studies on the Saturn ring defect associated with a spherical microparticle across the nematic to smectic- phase transition. We observe that the director distortion around the microparticle changes rapidly with temperature. The equilibrium interparticle separation and the angle between two quadrupolar particles in the phase are larger than those of the phase. They are almost independent of the temperature in both phases, except for a discontinuous jump at the transition. We assembled a few particles using a laser tweezer to form a two-dimensional colloidal crystal in the phase. The lattice structure of the crystal dissolves irreversibly across the phase transition. The results on the pretransitional behavior of the defect are supported by the Landau–de Gennes -tensor modeling.
- Received 4 August 2015
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.92.052501
©2015 American Physical Society