Related papers: 'Setting things straight' by twisting and bending?
We review the physics underlying Meyer's conjecture of how macroscopic-scale twist and bend conspire within the Frank-Oseen elasticity theory of nematics to create a heliconical arrangement of the uniaxial, apolar nematic director, the…
The twist-bend nematic (Ntb) phase is a recent addition to the nematic (N) phases of liquid crystals (LCs). A net polar order in the Ntb phase under an external electric field was predicted in several recent theoretical studies but yet to…
A series of non-symmetric dimers were synthesised containing either cyanobiphenyl or difluoroterphenyl moieties on one side and a range of long, short, bent, polar or apolar mesogens on the other side of the molecules. The dielectric…
The dielectric spectra of the twist bend nematic phase of the bent shaped achiral liquid crystal dimer are studied for the determination of the different relaxation modes. The two molecular processes were assigned one to the precessional…
We present a simplified molecular model of mesogenic dimers consisting of two identical uniaxial mesogenic cores separated by a fixed-length spacer and allowed to assume only two, statistically equivalent, conformations which are non-planar…
Nematic twist--bend is the fifth nematic phase recognized in nature. This phase exhibits spiral orientational order, thus it is a chiral structure and it can be stabilized in systems composed of achiral molecules. The microscopic origin of…
The understanding of self-organization in the twist-bend nematic $(N_\text{TB})$ phase, identified in 2011 in liquid crystal dimers, is at the forefront of soft matter research worldwide. This new nematic phase develops structural chirality…
Molecular dynamics simulations of selected members of the cyano-biphenyl series of dimers (CBnCB) have been set up using atomistic detail interactions among intermolecular pairs of united atoms and allowing fully for the flexibility of the…
NMR measurements on a selectively deuteriated liquid crystal dimer CB-C9-CB exhibiting two nematic phases show that the molecules in the lower temperature nematic phase, Nx, experience a chiral environment and are ordered about a unique…
An analysis of the IR absorbance for the segmented functional groups of liquid crystal dimers: mesogen and linker, enabled the orientation order to be determined and information about the dipole interactions in the nematic and twist-bend…
Dynamic simulations of the isotropic-nematic phase transformation of liquid crystal droplets under homeotropic anchoring are found to predict chiral symmetry-breaking dynamics. These observations occur when using material parameters for…
The quadrupolar splittings of perdeuteriated n-decane dissolved in nematic phases formed by mesogenic dimers of the CBnCB series, for n=7,9,10,11 are measured throughout the entire temperature range of these phases. The results of the…
The nanostructure of two novel sulfur containing dimer materials has been investigated experimentally by hard and by resonant tender X-ray scattering techniques. On cooling the dimers through the nematic to twist-bend nematic (N-NTB) phase…
The critical behavior at the transition from uniform nematic to twist-bend modulated nematic phase is revealed and shown to be well explained by the mean field approximation. The study was performed on a group of materials that exhibit an…
Using a novel Se-labelled dimer mixed with DTC5C7 aligned by magnetic field, the twist-bend nematic phase (Ntb) in dimers was studied by hard X-ray resonant scattering and by small and wide angle X-ray scattering (SAXS, WAXS). Resonant…
A system that possesses translational symmetry but breaks orientational symmetry is known as a nematic phase. While there are many examples of nematic phases in a wide range of contexts, such as in liquid crystals, complex oxides, and…
The nematic twist-bend ($\mathrm{N_{TB}}$) phase, exhibited by certain thermotropic liquid crystalline (LC) dimers, represents a new orientationally ordered mesophase -- the first distinct nematic variant discovered in many years. The…
We present a comprehensive set of measurements of optical, dielectric, diamagnetic, elastic and viscous properties in the nematic (N) phase formed by a liquid crystalline dimer. The studied dimer, 1,7-bis-4-(4-cyanobiphenyl) heptane…
Phase separation of sequence-disordered liquid crystalline polymers, a promising class of technological and biological relevance, is studied by field theory, and thermodynamic mechanisms responsible for orientational ordering observed in…
An intermediate nematic phase is proposed for the interpretation of recent experimental results on phase biaxiality in bent-core nematics. The phase is macroscopically uniaxial but consists of microscopic biaxial, and possibly polar,…