Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, Vol.557, 73-83, 2012
Phase Transition Studies and Thermodynamic Parameters of Four Members of nO.m Series-A Dilatometric Study
Density measurements are carried out on four alkoxy benzylidene alkyl anilines, viz., N-(p-n-methoxy/ethoxybenzylidene)-p-n-dodecyl and tetradecylanilines, 1O.12, 1O.14, 2O.12, and 2O.14. The first three compounds exhibit monovariant nematic phase while the last compound exhibits nematic and smectic-A phase with variable thermal ranges. The density measurements infer the first order nature for Isotropic to nematic (Iso-N) phase transformation while the nematic to smetic-A (N-SmA) transition as weak first order. Thermal expansion coefficient alpha estimated from density rho is utilized for the computation of thermodynamic parameters of above liquid crystalline compounds. The temperature variation of different thermodynamic parameters like Moelwyn-Hughes parameter, reduced volume, reduced compressibility, isothermal, isochoric, and isobaric Gruneisan parameters, etc., are estimated. The results are compared with the available data in literature of other compounds.