Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in Polar Fluids

Abstract

Spontaneous symmetry breaking and emergent polar order are each of fundamental importance to a range of scientific disciplines, as well as generating rich phase behaviour in liquid crystals (LCs). Here, we show the union of these phenomena to lead to two previously undiscovered polar liquid states of matter. Both phases have a lamellar structure with an inherent polar ordering of their constituent molecules. The first of these phases is characterised by polar order and a local tilted structure; the tilt direction precesses about a helix orthogonal to the layer normal, the period of which is such that we observe selective reflection of light. The second new phase type is anti-ferroelectric, with the constituent molecules aligning orthogonally to the layer normal. This has led us to term the phases the SmC_P^H and SmAAF phases, respectively. Further to this, we obtain room temperature ferroelectric nematic (NF) and SmC_P^Hphases via binary mixture formulation of the novel materials described here with a standard NF compound (DIO), with the resultant materials having melting points (and/or glass transitions) which are significantly below ambient temperature.

References in corpus (7)

• First-Principles Experimental Demonstration of Ferroelectricity in a Thermotropic Nematic Liquid Crystal: Spontaneous Polar Domains and Striking Electro-Optics
• Ferroelectric-ferroelastic phase transition in a nematic liquid crystal
• Development of polar nematic fluids with giant-\k{appa} dielectric properties
• Heliconical smectic phases formed by achiral molecules
• Polar In-Plane Surface Orientation of a Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystal: Polar Monodomains and Twisted State Electro-Optics
• Antiferroelectric Smectic Ordering as a Prelude to the Ferroelectric Nematic:Introducing the Smectic $Z_A$ Phase
• Chiral ground states of ferroelectric liquid crystals

Cited by in corpus (12)

• 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
• Reactive Fluid Ferroelectrics: A Gateway to the Next Generation of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystalline Polymer Networks
• Double Splay Nematic Order in Confined Polar Fluids
• Ferri- and Ferro-Electric Switching in Spontaneously Chiral Polar Liquid Crystals
• Polarity from the Bottom Up: A Computational Framework for Predicting Spontaneous Polar Order
• Mean-field theory of the uniaxial ferroelectric smectic A liquid crystal phase
• Jahn-Teller-like Distortion in a One-dimensional π-Conjugated Polymer
• Nonlinear optical response and spontaneous polarization in layer-stacked gallenene using second harmonic generation
• Deformed states in paraelectric and ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals
• Helix alignment, chevrons, and edge dislocations in twist-bend ferroelectric nematics