Splay Nematic Phase
Alenka Mertelj,Luka Cmok,Nerea Sebastián,Richard J. Mandle,Rachel R. Parker,Adrian C. Whitwood,John W. Goodby,Martin Čopič,Martin Čopič +8 more
TLDR
In this paper, a transition from uniaxial to novel nematic phase characterized by a periodic splay modulation of the director is described, and the phase transition is weakly first order with a significant pretransitional behavior, which manifests as strong splay fluctuations.Abstract:
Different liquid crystalline phases with long-range orientational but not positional order, so-called nematic phases, are scarce. It rarely occurs that a new nematic phase is discovered and such event is inevitably accompanied by a great interest. Here, we describe a transition from uniaxial to novel nematic phase characterized by a periodic splay modulation of the director. In this new nematic phase, defect structures not present in the uniaxial nematic are observed, which indicates that the new phase has lower symmetry than the ordinary nematic phase. The phase transition is weakly first order with a significant pretransitional behavior, which manifests as strong splay fluctuations. When approaching the phase transition, the splay nematic constant is unusually low and goes towards zero. Analogously to the transition from the uniaxial nematic to the twist-bend nematic phase, this transition is driven by instability towards splay orientational deformation, resulting in a periodically splayed structure. And, similarly, a Landau-de Gennes type of phenomenological theory can be used to describe the phase transition. The modulated splay phase is biaxial and antiferroelectric.read more
Citations
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First-principles experimental demonstration of ferroelectricity in a thermotropic nematic liquid crystal: Polar domains and striking electro-optics.
Xi Chen,Eva Korblova,Dengpan Dong,Dengpan Dong,Xiaoyu Wei,Xiaoyu Wei,Renfan Shao,Leo Radzihovsky,Matthew A. Glaser,Joseph E. Maclennan,Dmitry Bedrov,Dmitry Bedrov,David M. Walba,Noel A. Clark +13 more
TL;DR: The experimental determination of the structure and response to applied electric field of the lower-temperature nematic phase of the previously reported calamitic compound 4-[(4-nitrophenoxy)carbonyl]phenyl2,4-dimethoxybenzoate and results indicate a significant potential for transformative, new nematic physics, chemistry, and applications based on the enhanced understanding, development, and exploitation of molecular electrostatic interaction.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ferroelectric-Ferroelastic Phase Transition in a Nematic Liquid Crystal.
Nerea Sebastián,Luka Cmok,Richard J. Mandle,Maria de la Fuente,Irena Drevenšek Olenik,Irena Drevenšek Olenik,Martin Čopič,Martin Čopič,Alenka Mertelj +8 more
TL;DR: It is shown that ferroelectric ordering of the molecules causes the formation of recently reported splay nematic liquid-crystalline phase, which drives an orientational ferroelastic transition via flexoelectric coupling.
Journal ArticleDOI
Development of ferroelectric nematic fluids with giant-ε dielectricity and nonlinear optical properties.
Jinxing Li,Hiroya Nishikawa,Junichi Kougo,Junchen Zhou,Shuqi Dai,Wentao Tang,Xiuhu Zhao,Yuki Hisai,Mingjun Huang,Satoshi Aya +9 more
TL;DR: In this paper, small molecules with high polarity, enabled by rational molecular design and machine learning analyses, enable the development of superhigh-e fluid materials (dielectric permittivity, e > 104) with strong second harmonic generation and macroscopic spontaneous polar ordering.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystal, a century in waiting
TL;DR: In PNAS, the liquid crystal group of the Soft Materials Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, led by N. A. Clark, reports on the discovery of a ferroelectric nematic fluid NF, an additional state of matter, which is a nonpolar version of the discovered nematic.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the molecular origins of the ferroelectric splay nematic phase.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors 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.
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