Time-Resolved Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy on the Inter- and Intramolecular Orientational Dynamics in Ferroelectric Liquid Crystalline Dimers

On a base of time-resolved step-scan IR-spectroscopy data, we present a detailed model of the segmental reorientation during the ferroelectric and electroclinic switching of a chiral liquid crystalline dimer. We detected that the magnitude of the motion of the molecular segments differ from each other: The tilt angle is maximal for the mesogens and minimal for the ``virtual polysiloxane backbone.'' In contrast to a recently published conjecture, we prove that in the {μ}s scale the responses of different molecular segments are unambiguously synchronous with each other.