Calorimetric and x-ray diffraction studies of phase transitions in lyotropic liquid crystals

he disk-like micelles in binary mixtures of cesium-perfluoro-octanoate (CsPFO) and water form isotropic (I), nematic (N) and lamellar ;The calorimetric technique allows us to find the critical heat capacity exponent ;Synchrotron x-ray scattering allows us to study the critical lamellar fluctuations in the nematic phase, which can be used to measure the critical exponents of the correlation length and lamellar susceptibility, respectively. The longitudinal correlation length and the lamellar susceptibility at a concentration 46.6 wt. % CsPFO were measured as a function of temperature over three decades of reduced temperature. The lamellar phase fluctuations in the nematic phase diverge with critical exponents...