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American Institute of Physics, Review of Scientific Instruments, 3(81), p. 033907

DOI: 10.1063/1.3327820

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Synchronized optical and electrical characterization of discotic liquid crystals thin films.

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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

We describe a setup suitable for simultaneously measuring optical and electrical properties of a liquid crystal mesophase upon temperature variation, and the difference in the order parameters between the bulk and the interface with the substrate. It integrates high-resolution polarized light optical microscopy, temperature regulation, and electrical measurements in a controlled atmosphere with a software kernel that controls the instruments and synchronizes the data streams. A user-friendly interface allows us to program multistep experiments controlling all the instruments and data acquisition by a specifically designed scheduler. We tested our system on a thin film of alkoxy-substituted phthalocyanines deposited on a test pattern with interdigitated electrodes. We studied the optical and electrical behavior in the proximity of the bulk phase transition to isotropic liquid, identifying a few ordered monolayers anchored to the substrate above the transition temperature. ; Journal Article ; SCOPUS: ar.j ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published