On the molecular origins of the ferroelectric splay nematic phase

Abstract

Nematic liquid crystals have been known for more than a century, but it was not until the 60s-70s that, with the development of room temperature nematics, they became widely used in applications. Polar nematic phases have been long-time predicted, but have only been experimentally realized recently. Synthesis of materials with nematic polar ordering at room temperature is certainly challenging and requires a deep understanding of its formation mechanisms, presently lacking. Here, we compare two materials of similar chemical structure and demonstrate that just a subtle change in the molecular structure enables denser packing of the molecules when they exhibit polar order, which shows that reduction of excluded volume is in the origin of the polar nematic phase. Additionally, we propose that molecular dynamics simulations are potent tools for molecular design in order to predict, identify and design materials showing the polar nematic phase and its precursor nematic phases.

33 pages, 21 of main manuscript and 12 of Supporting Information, 7 main figures

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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystalline phases
• Antiferroelectric Smectic Ordering as a Prelude to the Ferroelectric Nematic:Introducing the Smectic $Z_A$ Phase
• Spontaneous electric-polarization topology in confined ferroelectric nematics
• Ideal Mixing of Paraelectric and Ferroelectric Nematic Phases in Liquid Crystals of Distinct Molecular Species
• Dielectric spectroscopy of a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal and the effect of the sample thickness
• Polarisation-driven magneto-optical and nonlinear-optical behaviour of a room-temperature ferroelectric nematic phase
• Soft Metamaterials: Adaptation and Intelligence
• Emergent Anti-Ferroelectric Ordering and the Coupling of Liquid Crystalline and Polar Order
• Collective and non-collective molecular dynamics in a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal studied by broadband dielectric spectroscopy
• Systematic Fluorination is a Powerful Design Strategy Towards Fluid Molecular Ferroelectrics
• Polar order in a fluid like ferroelectric with a tilted lamellar structure -- observation of a polar smectic C (SmC${}_{\text{P}}$) phase
• Antiferroelectric order in nematic liquids: Flexoelectricity vs electrostatics
• In silico study of liquid crystalline phases formed by bent-shaped molecules with excluded-volume type interactions
• A molecular perspective on the emergence of long-range polar order from an isotropic fluid
• Double Splay Nematic Order in Confined Polar Fluids
• Polarity from the Bottom Up: A Computational Framework for Predicting Spontaneous Polar Order
• Ferri- and Ferro-Electric Switching in Spontaneously Chiral Polar Liquid Crystals
• Tunable macroscopic defect patterns induced by a low-frequency AC electric field in ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals
• Confinement Reveals Hidden Splay-Bend Order in Twist-Bend Nematics
• Inderdigitation, double twist, and topological defects in a system of hard lollipops