Normal alkanes of carbon number n>14 exhibit surface crystallization at their liquid-vapor interface. This has been investigated with x-ray reflectivity, grazing incidence scattering and surface tension measurements. The structure and thermodynamics of the surface layer is consistent with a monolayer of the bulk rotator phase occurring at the surface above the bulk melting temperature. On the other hand, thin films of alkanes on SiO2, exhibit a reduction of the melting temperature. The surface crystalline phase is observed for carbon number n>14. The vanishing of surface phase for small n may be due to a transition from surface freezing to surface melting behavior. These measurements can yield the relative surface energies of the various phases.

We describe x-ray scattering studies of the nematic and smectic-A phases of the thermotropic liquid crystal 8CB and the Lα, and L3 (lamellar and sponge) phases of the lyotropic liquid crystal system: SDS, dodecane, pentanol and water. In the thermotropic system a series of orientational states of the nematic director is observed before entering the smectic-A phase where the smectic density wave and nematic director are oriented normal to the shear plane at high shear rates. In the lyotropic system lamellar fluctuations in the sponge phase (L3) become oriented by shear and in the lamellar phase (Lα) at high shear the layers orient preferentially along the velocity-gradient direction, in highly anisotropic cylindrical multilamellar liposome-like structures.

We present results of an x-ray scattering study on the rotator phases of normal alkanes: CH2-(CH3)n-CH2 (20 ≤ ≤ 33). We have characterized a new tilted rotator phase and measured the distortion and tilt order parameters in all 5 rotator phases. We have shown that there is no strong even-odd chain effect within the rotator phases.

We report on synchrotron x-ray scattering studies of the microscopic structure of the nematic (N) and the smectic-A (SmA) phases in the liquid crystal 8CB under dynamic “steady state” shear flow conditions carried out in an x-ray Couette cell. These measurements directly probe length scales less than 100 Å and as large as 104 Å in the vicinity of the N-SmA phase transition away from equilibrium. The N-SmA transition corresponds to the onset of a one-dimensional mass density wave. In the nematic phase close to the smectic-A phase, there are very large pretransitional smectic-A fluctuations because the transition is almost second order. Under shear flow, we find that the nematic director undergoes a series of abrupt transitions between different orientational states of the director. We discuss the stability regimes of these orientational states by considering the fluctuation induced renormalization of one of the nematic shear viscosities and the fluctuation induced torque on the nematic director.