The smectic-A to nematic (Sm-A-N) transition was studied confined to the randomly interconnected voids of Millipore filters via a high resolution calorimetry. The heat capacity peaks evolve from sharp and prominent to broad and small depending on void size. The random confinement drives the heat capacity critical exponent from the bulk value towards zero, indicating a confinement-induced decoupling of smectic and nematic order parameters.
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Qian et al. (1996) studied this question.
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