Left or right cholesterics? A matter of helix handedness and curliness

Abstract

We have investigated the relationship between the morphology of helical particles and the features of the cholesteric (N${}^{\ast }$) phase that they form. Using an Onsager-like theory, applied to systems of hard helices, we show that the cholesteric handedness and pitch depend on both the pitch and the curliness of the particles. The theory leads to the definition of pseudoscalars that correlate the helical features of the phase to the chirality of the excluded volume of the constituent particles.

References in corpus (2)

• From rods to helices: evidence of a screw-like nematic phase
• Phase behavior of wormlike rods

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Cholesterics of colloidal helices: Predicting the macroscopic pitch from the particle shape and thermodynamic state
• Density Functional Theory for Chiral Nematic Liquid Crystals
• Cholesteric and screw-like nematic phases in systems of helical particles
• Hierarchical bounding structures for efficient virial computations: Towards a realistic molecular description of cholesterics
• The Thermodynamic Origins of Chiral Twist in Monolayer Assemblies of Hard Rod-like Colloids