Effect of terminal functional group size on ferroelectric and antiferroelectric properties of liquid crystals

Through the incorporation of sterically hindering, bulky terminal groups into the structures of chiral and racemic smectic liquid-crystalline materials, we sought to interfere with, and decouple, the layers of various mesophases. By varying the size of the terminal group we found that we could control the mesophase structure, and to some degree its physical properties. In this article we present textural and X-ray data which give insights into the structures of the mesophases.