Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Bent-Core Liquid Crystals

Abstract

By molecular modeling we demonstrate that the nematic long-range order discovered in bent-core liquid crystal systems should reveal further spatially homogeneous phases. Two of them are identified as a tetrahedratic nematic ($N_T$) phase with $D_{2d}$ symmetry and a chiral tetrahedratic nematic ($N_T^{\ast }$) phase with $D_2$ symmetry. These new phases were found for a lattice model with quadrupolar and octupolar anisotropic interactions using Mean Field theory and Monte Carlo simulations. The phase diagrams exhibit tetrahedratic ($T$), $N_T$ and $N_T^{\ast }$ phases, in addition to ordinary isotropic ($I$), uniaxial nematic ($N_U$) and biaxial nematic ($N_B$) phases. To our knowledge, this is the first molecular model with spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in non-layered systems.

12 pages, 4 figures, submitted for publication

References in corpus (4)

• Theory of Banana Liquid Crystal Phases and Phase Transitions
• Landau-deGennes Theory of Biaxial Nematics Re-examined
• Monte Carlo Simulation of Liquid-Crystal Alignment and of Chiral Symmetry-Breaking
• Stability of Biaxial Nematic Phase for Systems with Variable Molecular Shape Anisotropy

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Modulated nematic structures induced by chirality and steric polarization
• Nematic twist--bend phase in an external field
• Twist-bend nematic phases of bent-shaped biaxial molecules
• Generalized liquid crystals: giant fluctuations and the vestigial chiral order of $I$, $O$ and $T$ matter
• Tetrahedral Order in Liquid Crystals
• Classifying local anisotropy formed by rigid molecules: symmetries and tensors
• Generic first-order phase transitions between isotropic and orientational phases with polyhedral symmetries
• Computer simulation study of a mesogenic lattice model based on long-range dispersion interactions
• Modulated nematic structures and chiral symmetry breaking in 2D