Properties of non-tilted bent-core orthogonal smectic liquid crystal

We present the properties of different achiral orthogonal polar smectic phases observed in a homologous series of bent-core molecular compounds. The macroscopically uniaxial SmA_PR phase transforms to biaxial state by the application of higher electric fields and biaxial SmA_PA phase undergoes biaxial-uniaxial-biaxial texture transformation with increasing electric fields, i.e., initial antiferroelectric structure transforms into ferroelectric state under higher electric fields and it shows three different optically distinguishable states. The SmAP_AR phase shows an entirely different response compared to other polar smectic phases under study. The dielectric measurements in the SmAP_AR phase is the evidence of antiferroelectric behavior of uniaxial state. The polarizing microscopy texture observation supports the corresponding biaxiality measurements.