X-ray reflectivity study of smectic wetting and prewetting at the free surface of isotropic liquid crystals.

We study the structures of free-surface-wetting layers above the isotropic to smectic-A transition of three liquid-crystal compounds that show different kinds of growth of the wetting film as the bulk transition is approached: layer-by-layer, continuous, and continuous with prewetting. The smectic-A surface phase of the layer-by-layer compound consists of well-defined layers and possesses a sharp boundary to the isotropic bulk phase, whereas in the two continuous compounds sinusoidal density oscillations with a continuously decaying amplitude are found. In the continuous case with prewetting, the wetting film below the prewetting transition does not show an essential difference to the continuous case without prewetting.