Heliconical smectic phases formed by achiral molecules

Ferroelectric smectic phase formed by achiral straight core mesogens.

We report electro-optic experiments in liquid crystalline freestanding films of achiral hockey stick shaped mesogens with a straight aromatic core. The material forms two smectic mesophases. In the higher temperature phase, a spontaneous polarization exists in the smectic layer plane and the films show polar switching in electric fields. It is the first example of a ferroelectric phase formed b...

Theory and simulation of biaxial nematic and orthogonal smectic phases formed by mixtures of board-like molecules

Variational cluster calculations and Monte Carlo simulations are applied to hard-body board-like models of biaxial molecules forming liquid crystalline phases. The molecular long axes are assumed for simplicity to be fully oriented. Depending on the extent of transverse anisometry in the molecular shape, these systems can exhibit biaxial nematic phases as well as uniaxial and biaxial orthogonal...

Biaxial Smectic Phases

Biaxial Smectic Banana Phases

Generation of frustrated liquid crystal phases by mixing an achiral nematic-smectic-C mesogen with an antiferroelectric chiral smectic liquid crystal.

By mixing the achiral liquid crystal HOAB, exhibiting a nematic (N)-smectic-C (SmC) mesophase sequence, with the chiral antiferroelectric liquid crystal (AFLC) (S,S)-M7BBM7, forming the antiferroelectric SmC(a)(*) phase, at least seven different mesophases have been induced which neither component forms on its own: a twist-grain-boundary (TGB(*)) phase, two or three blue phases, the untilted Sm...