Tilted and non-tilted liquid crystalline langmuir monolayers: Analogy to bulk smectic phases

Hydrophobic compounds of smectic liquid crystals are spontaneously spread on a liquid surface to form softly-condensed monomolecular films. The constituent molecules are coherently tilted from the surface normal when they form smectic-C phase in the bulk state, while the molecules are aligned perpendicular to the surface when they form smectic-A or -B phase in the bulk. The result proves that the tilting property in the smectic liquid crystals should be determined only by the intralayer molecular interaction. The molecular dynamics simulations can reproduce the experimental result satisfactorily and also suggest that the molecular dipole moment should play an essential role to cause the coherent molecular tilt in smectic liquid crystals.