Chiral Incommensurate Helical Phase in a Smectic of Achiral Bent-Core Mesogens

An achiral, bent-core mesogen forms several tilted smectic liquid crystal phases, including a nonpolar, achiral de Vries smectic A which transitions to a chiral, ferroelectric state in applied electric fields above a threshold. At lower temperature, a chiral, ferrielectric phase with a periodic, sup...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysical review letters Vol. 122; no. 10; p. 107801
Main Authors Green, Adam A S, Tuchband, Michael R, Shao, Renfan, Shen, Yongqiang, Visvanathan, Rayshan, Duncan, Alexandra E, Lehmann, Anne, Tschierske, Carsten, Carlson, Eric D, Guzman, Edward, Kolber, Maria, Walba, David M, Park, Cheol S, Glaser, Matthew A, Maclennan, Joseph E, Clark, Noel A
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 15.03.2019
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Summary:An achiral, bent-core mesogen forms several tilted smectic liquid crystal phases, including a nonpolar, achiral de Vries smectic A which transitions to a chiral, ferroelectric state in applied electric fields above a threshold. At lower temperature, a chiral, ferrielectric phase with a periodic, supermolecular modulation of the tilt azimuth, indicated by a Bragg peak in carbon-edge resonant soft x-ray scattering, is observed. The absence of a corresponding resonant umklapp peak identifies the superlayer structure as a twist-bend-like helix that is only weakly modulated by the smectic layering.
ISSN:1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.107801