Theory of the splay nematic phase: Single vs. double splay
arXiv:2003.12893 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.101.052707
Abstract
Recent experiments have reported a novel splay nematic phase, which has alternating domains of positive and negative splay. To model this phase, previous studies have considered a 1D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a 1D modulation of polar order. When the flexoelectric coupling between splay and polar order becomes sufficiently strong, the uniform nematic state becomes unstable to the formation of a modulated phase. Here, we re-examine this theory in terms of a new approach to liquid crystal elasticity, which shows that pure splay deformation is double splay rather than planar single splay. Following that reasoning, we propose a structure with a 2D splay modulation of the director field, accompanied by a 2D modulation of polar order, and show that the 2D structure generally has a lower free energy than the 1D structure.
References in corpus (3)
Cited by in corpus (18)
- Development of polar nematic fluids with giant-\k{appa} dielectric properties
- Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases
- On the molecular origins of the ferroelectric splay nematic phase
- Antiferroelectric Smectic Ordering as a Prelude to the Ferroelectric Nematic:Introducing the Smectic Phase
- Soliton walls paired by polar surface interactions in a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal
- Director Deformations, Geometric Frustration, and Modulated Phases in Liquid Crystals
- Design of nematic liquid crystals to control microscale dynamics
- Polarisation-driven magneto-optical and nonlinear-optical behaviour of a room-temperature ferroelectric nematic phase
- Flashing a look at the stability of the uniform ferroelectric nematic phase
- Antiferroelectric order in nematic liquids: Flexoelectricity vs electrostatics
- Violation of Ericksen inequalities in lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals
- Flexoelectricity versus Electrostatics in Polar Nematic Liquid Crystals
- Modulated phases of nematic liquid crystals induced by tetrahedral order
- Double Splay Nematic Order in Confined Polar Fluids
- Thermotropic reentrant isotropy and antiferroelectricity in the ferroelectric nematic realm: Comparing RM734 and DIO
- Half-integer Topological Defects Paired via String Micelles in Polar Liquids
- Thermotropic reentrant isotropy and antiferroelectricity in the ferroelectric nematic material RM734
- Inderdigitation, double twist, and topological defects in a system of hard lollipops