Observation of scaling behaviour of dielectric relaxation in ferroelectric liquid crystals

The temperature (25-120 degrees C) and frequency (10 Hz-1 MHz) dependent dielectric relaxation spectra of different ferroelectric liquid crystals are found to show interesting scaling behaviour. Considering relaxation frequency (nu(max)) as the scaling frequency, the imaginary part of the dielectric constants (epsilon '') of the ferroelectric liquid crystals are found to follow the universal scaling formula epsilon ''(f)/epsilon ''(max)alpha (f/nu(max))(m), i.e. when (epsilon ''/epsilon ''(max)) is plotted as a function of (f/nu(max)), the scaling behaviour of a ferroelectric ligquid crystal can be represented by a single master curve irrespectvie of film thickness, bias fiel and temperature; epsilon ''(max) is the maximum value of epsilon '' at the frequency nu(max) and m is a parameter similar to 1.