Induced long-range order in crosslinked ‘one-dimensional’ stacks of fluid monolayers

Gerald C. L. Wong, Wim H. de Jeu (), Henry Shao, Keng S. Liang and Rudolf Zentel
Additional contact information
Gerald C. L. Wong: FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics
Wim H. de Jeu: FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics
Henry Shao: Exxon Research and Engineering Company
Keng S. Liang: Exxon Research and Engineering Company
Rudolf Zentel: Fachbereich 9: Chemie und Biologie, Bergische Universitt Wuppertal

Nature, 1997, vol. 389, issue 6651, 576-579

Abstract: Abstract Ordinary crystals are characterized by long-range translational order in all three dimensions. In lower-dimensional systems, in contrast, translational order is destroyed through the ‘Landau–Peierls instability’ — displacements from periodic ordering due to thermal fluctuations whose amplitude increases with the size of the system1,2,3,4. This effect is well known for layered systems ordered in one dimension, such as surfactant membranes5,6, smectic (layered) liquid crystals7 and liquid crystalline polymers8, which form ordered stacks of fluid monolayers. Smectic liquid-crystal polymers can be weakly crosslinked to form percolating elastomeric networks that still allow mobility on a molecular scale9,10. In these smectic elastomers, fluctuations of the fluid layers are coupled to distortions of the underlying network, and are therefore energetically penalized11, even though the network of crosslinks has a random nature and thus no three-dimensional translational order. Here we present a high-resolution X-ray diffraction study of a smectic elastomer that reveals the effects of crosslinking on long-range ordering. We find that the introduction of a random network of crosslinks enhances the stability of the layered structure against thermal fluctuations and suppresses the Landau–Peierls instability so as to induce ‘one-dimensional’ long-range ordering at length-scales up to several micrometres.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/39271 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:389:y:1997:i:6651:d:10.1038_39271

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/39271

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().