Related papers: On the Microscopic Origin of Cholesteric Pitch
The chiral structure of liquid crystalline phases arises due to the intrinsic chirality of the constituent mesogens. While it is seemingly straightforward to quantify the macroscopic chirality by using, for instance, the cholesteric pitch…
Molecular chirality leads to a wonderful variety of equilibrium structures, from the simple cholesteric phase to the twist-grain-boundary phases, and it is responsible for interesting and technologically important materials like…
The fundamental issues of symmetry related to chirality are discussed and applied to simple situations relevant to liquid crystals. We show that any chiral measure of a geometric object is a pseudoscalar (invariant under proper rotations…
We investigate the statistical mechanics of chirality and biaxiality in liquid crystals through a variety of theoretical approaches, including Monte Carlo simulations, lattice mean-field theory, and Landau theory. All of these calculations…
We theoretically investigate the pitch of lyotropic cholesteric phases composed of slender rods with steric chirality transmitted via a weak helical deformation of the backbone. In this limit, the model is amenable to analytical treatment…
Building a general theoretical framework to describe the microscopic origin of macroscopic chirality in (colloidal) liquid crystals is a long-standing challenge. Here, we combine classical density functional theory with Monte Carlo…
We report a computer simulation study on the effect of molecular structural biaxiality in the phase formation of chiral molecules. In this study, we have done coarse-grained modeling to observe self-assembled phase behavior. In our…
Cholesteric elastomers possess a macroscopic ``phase chirality'' as the director n rotates in a helical fashion along an optical axis $z$ and can be described by a chiral order parameter. This parameter can be tuned by changing the helix…
Recent experiments on aligned DNA show hexatic order with no sign of macroscopic chirality. I make the analogy between smectic liquid crystals and chiral hexatics and show how the absence of chirality cannot occur in a thermodynamic phase…
A statistical theory of cholesteric liquid crystals composed of short rigid biaxial molecules is presented. It is derived in the thermodynamic limit at a small density and a small twist. The uniaxial (biaxial) cholesteric phase is regarded…
B-DNA solutions of suitable concentration form left-handed chiral nematic phases (cholesterics). Such phases have also been observed in solutions of other stiff or semiflexible chiral polymers; magnitude and handedness of the cholesteric…
We show that polymer cholesterics have much longer pitches than comparable short molecule cholesterics, due to their anomalous elasticity. The pitch $P$ of a chiral mixture with concentration $c$ near the racemic (non-chiral) concentration…
Even though chiral nematic phases were the first liquid crystals experimentally observed more than a century ago, the origin of the thermodynamic stability of cholesteric states is still unclear. In this Letter we address the problem by…
Chiral nematic or cholesteric liquid crystals (LCs) are mesophases with long-ranged orientational order featuring a quasi-layered periodicity imparted by a helical configuration but lacking positional order. Doping molecular cholesteric LCs…
We consider the interaction potential between two chiral rod-like colloids which consist of a thin cylindrical backbone decorated with a helical charge distribution on the cylinder surface. For sufficiently slender coiled rods a simple…
Colloidal particles disturb the alignment of rod-like molecules of liquid crystals, giving rise to long-range interactions that minimize the free energy of distorted regions. Particle shape and topology are known to guide this self-assembly…
In a ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal, the electrostatic interaction can induce a spontaneous cholesteric helix, even if the material is not chiral. If the liquid-crystal cell is infinitely thick, then the predicted pitch depends…
We propose a construction of a cholesteric pitch axis for an arbitrary nematic director field as an eigenvalue problem. Our definition leads to a Frenet-Serret description of an orthonormal triad determined by this axis, the director, and…
This paper reviews the complex ordered structures induced by chirality in liquid crystals. In general, chirality favors a twist in the orientation of liquid-crystal molecules. In some cases, as in the cholesteric phase, this favored twist…
We use continuum theory to show that chirality is a key thermodynamic control parameter for the aggregation of biopolymers: chirality produces a stable disperse phase of hexagonal bundles under moderately poor solvent conditions, as has…