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Science 9 October 1992:
Vol. 258. no. 5080, pp. 275 - 278
DOI: 10.1126/science.258.5080.275
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Articles

Observations of the Liquid-Crystal Analog of the Abrikosov Phase

K. J. Ihn 1, J. A. N. Zasadzinski 1, R. Pindak 2, A. J. Slaney 3, and J. Goodby 3

1 Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106
2 AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974
3 School of Chemistry, The University, Hull, HU6 7RX, England

Freeze-fracture transmission electron micrographs of the smectic A* phase confirm the twist grain boundary model of Renn and Lubensky. The fracture surface has an undulating structure with a 0.5-micrometer helical pitch parallel to 4.1-nanometer smectic layers. The layers are disrupted by a lattice of screw dislocations oriented normal to the helical axis. Optical diffraction shows that rotation of smectic blocks occurs in discrete steps of about 17°; hence, the screw dislocations are 14 to 15 nanometers apart and the grain boundaries are 24 nanometers apart. These observations show that the SmA* phase is the liquid-crystal analog of the Abrikosov phase in superconductors.

Submitted on May 5, 1992
Accepted on July 20, 1992


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
From The Cover: Giant-block twist grain boundary smectic phases.
J. Fernsler, L. Hough, R.-F. Shao, J. E. Maclennan, L. Navailles, M. Brunet, N. V. Madhusudana, O. Mondain-Monval, C. Boyer, J. Zasadzinski, et al. (2005)
PNAS 102, 14191-14196
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