High pressure investigations of the photo-stimulated orientational ordering transition in a liquid crystal with photoactive dimeric molecules

High pressure investigations have been carried out on the photo-stimulated phase transition exhibited by a guest–host system, where the host is a non-photoactive liquid crystal. As guest molecules we chose successive homologues of a dimeric photoactive azobenzene liquid crystalline molecule to understand the influence of the length and parity of the alkylene spacer on such a transition. Our studies show that application of pressure as well as the parity of the spacer has a drastic influence both on the static and dynamic characters of the photo-stimulated phase transition.