[en] Using a variety of optical and electrooptical techniques as well as dielectric spectroscopy, we have investigated three homologues in the chiral liquid crystal series nF1M7, where n denotes the length of the unbranched side-chain. The main focus of the study is the series of smectic C subphases, i.e. SmCa*, SmC1/3* and SmC1/4*. During switching in the SmCa* phase, a peculiar redirection of the plane of biaxiality, distinguishing this phase from SmA* and SmC*, was observed. We present a simple explanation for this behaviour which correlates well with the clock model description of the SmCa* phase. We found a zero mesoscopic polarisation for the SmC1/4* phase and a non-zero mesoscopic polarisation for SmC1/3*, observations which are consistent with a distorted clock model. The dielectric spectroscopy investigations, performed at several different cell gaps, clearly show that the dielectric response in these materials is easily dominated by surface-induced structures if the cell gap is reduced, and thus reflects the bulk thermodynamic phase in very thick cells only.
