Unusual structures in some alkyl cyanoterphenyls

The phase behaviour of three alkyl cyanoterphenyls has been investigated with the particular objective of elucidating their unusual phase behaviour and determining the structure of the new, and so far uncharacterized, phase (E') appearing between the smectic A_d and the crystal E' phases. In the course of this work complications arose from the appearance of yet another phase which appears only on cooling but for which no characteristic X-ray diffraction pattern could be obtained. The E phase appears to have the orthorhombic symmetry characteristic of the E phase but has a complex temperature dependent packing in the c direction. This is driven by the competition between a density wave and an antiferroelectric pair ordering which results in a locked-in structure with a periodicity of three times that of the underlying density wave.