Horizontal chevron domain formation and smectic layer reorientation in SmC* liquid crystals stabilized by polymer networks

The influence of a polymer network, stabilizing an initial texture of horiz ontal chevron geometry, on the in-plane smectic C* layer reorientation proc ess is studied for different applied electric field conditions. As expected , the reorientation of smectic layers is strongly slowed down and eventuall y suppressed by the network, even at rather low monomer concentrations. Pol ymer network formation in a uniformly reoriented smectic layer state reveal s that the network acts in two ways: first it gives a biased elastic torque counteracting a field of such symmetry as to cause a change from the templ ated layer direction; second it introduces an increased effective viscosity counteracting the reorientation in both directions. The behaviour of sampl es stabilized by two different kinds of polymer networks, created in betwee n the smectic layers (intra-layer) and across them (inter-layer), is then i nvestigated and discussed.