Pretransitional critical-like behavior of dielectric permittivity in mixtures of mesomorphic and nonmesomorphic compounds.

Static dielectric measurements are performed in the temperature range of the isotropic-nematic phase transition of binary mixtures of mesomorphic n-heptylcyanobiphenyl (7CB) and nonmesomorphic: (a) n-heptylcyanophenyl (7CP) and (b) carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) , the solutes of different molecular shape and polarity. In the whole studied range of the solutes mole fraction (x) (x(max) approximately equal to 0.17) , the critical-like temperature behavior of the permittivity in the vicinity of the transition from the isotropic phase to the two-phase (nematic+isotropic) region can be well described with a critical exponent close to 0.5, as in a pure 7CB, indicating the tricritical nature of the transitions. It seems to be important that the fitting-determined temperatures of the virtual second-order transition in the solutions, T*, i.e., the temperature limit of the thermodynamic stability of supercooled isotropic phase, correspond well to the experimentally observed low-temperature limits of the two-phase isotropic+nematic region.