Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in cholesteric liquid crystals .II. The blue phase

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Abstract
NMR spectroscopy is utilized to study the little understood ’’blue phase’’ of the cholesteric liquid crystals cholesteryl m-fluorobenzoate and cholesteryl decanoate. The NMR spectra in the ordinary cholesteric phase has both structure and width; these features are reduced in the blue phase to the point where they resemble isotropic phase spectra. The presence of a wider than isotropic NMR line, however, indicates the presence of long-range orientational order and provides data which place constraints on the possible structure of the blue phase. In addition, the results show considerable thermal hysteresis for the blue-cholesteric transition in cholesteryl decanoate.