Raman Scattering Study of Phase Biaxiality in a Thermotropic Bent-Core Nematic Liquid Crystal

© 2010 American Physical Society. The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.027801DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.027801Polarized Raman spectroscopy was used to investigate the development of orientational order and the degree of phase biaxiality in a bent-core mesogenic system. The values of the uniaxial order parameters and , and biaxial order parameters , , and , and their evolution with temperature were determined. The temperature dependence of almost all order parameters reveals a second order transition from the uniaxial to biaxial nematic phase with increasing to similar to 0.22 before a first order transition to the smectic-C phase, upon cooling