This paper discusses the electrooptic Kerr effect in dilute solutions close to their stratification temperature and in melts in the neighborhood of the temperature of the isotropic-liquid-nematic-phase transition of two comb-shaped liquid-crystal polysiloxanes with different chemical structures of the mesogentc side groups. It is shown that pretransition effects associated with self-organization processes of the molecules of the polymers in the critical temperature region are observed both in solutions and in melts of the polymers. The largest variations were observed close to the stratification temperature of polysiloxane solutions, where not only did the absolute magnitude of the Kerr constant increase (by a factor of about 103), but the sign of the effect also changed. The electrooptic properties studied here in polysiloxanes are compared with the features of the chemical structure of the polymers and low-molecular-weight analogs of their mesogenic groups.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)531-534
Number of pages4
JournalJournal of Optical Technology (A Translation of Opticheskii Zhurnal)
Volume65
Issue number7
StatePublished - Jul 1998

    Scopus subject areas

  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Engineering(all)
  • Computational Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

ID: 74940794