Monte Carlo molecular simulations of curve-shaped rods show the propensity of such shapes to polymorphism revealing both smectic and polar nematic phases. The nematic exhibits a nanoscale modulated local structure characterized by a unique, polar, -symmetry axis that tightly spirals generating a mirror-symmetry-breaking organization of the achiral rods-form chirality. A comprehensive characterization of the polarity and its symmetries in the nematic phase confirms that the nanoscale modulation is distinct from the elastic deformations of a uniaxial nematic director in the twist-bend nematic phase. Instead it is shown that, analogous to the isotropic-to-nematic transition, entropy stabilizes the roto-translating polar director in the polar-twisted nematic phase. The conflation of macroscale form chirality in ferroelectric nematics with that in the twist-bend nematic stems from the misattribution of the nanoscale modulation in the lower temperature nematic "N phase" found in CB7CB dimers.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/d4sm01229a | DOI Listing |
Soft Matter
January 2025
Department of Materials Science, University of Patras, 26504 Patras, Greece.
Monte Carlo molecular simulations of curve-shaped rods show the propensity of such shapes to polymorphism revealing both smectic and polar nematic phases. The nematic exhibits a nanoscale modulated local structure characterized by a unique, polar, -symmetry axis that tightly spirals generating a mirror-symmetry-breaking organization of the achiral rods-form chirality. A comprehensive characterization of the polarity and its symmetries in the nematic phase confirms that the nanoscale modulation is distinct from the elastic deformations of a uniaxial nematic director in the twist-bend nematic phase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoft Matter
January 2025
Department of Physics, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan.
When nematic liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) crosslinked at their isotropic phase are quenched to the nematic phase, they show polydomain patterns, in which nematic microdomains with different orientations self-organize into a three-dimensional mosaic with characteristic correlation patterns. The orientational correlation length of the domain, which is usually in the micrometer range, is believed to emerge as a result of a competition between liquid crystalline ordering and frozen network inhomogeneity. Although polydomain patterns show potentials as the basic platform for optical, memory, and mechanical devices, no study exists regarding how they are modulated by experimentally accessible parameters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Mater
January 2025
School of Physics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
In ordered magnets, the elementary excitations are spin waves (magnons), which obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Similarly to Cooper pairs in superconductors, magnons can be paired into bound states under attractive interactions. The Zeeman coupling to a magnetic field is able to tune the particle density through a quantum critical point, beyond which a 'hidden order' is predicted to exist.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMater Horiz
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Bio-based Material Science and Technology of Ministry of Education, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China.
Dynamic responsive structural colored materials have drawn increased consideration in a wide range of applications, such as colorimetric sensors and high-safety tags. However, the sophisticated interactions among the individual responsive parts restrict the advanced design of multimodal responsive photonic materials. Inspired by stimuli-responsive color change in chameleon skin, a simple and effective photo-crosslinking strategy is proposed to construct hydroxypropyl cellulose (HPC) based hydrogels with multiple responsive structured colors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChemistry
January 2025
University of Windsor Faculty of Science, Chemistry & Biochemsitry, 401 Sunset Avenue, N9B 3P4, Windsor, CANADA.
Attachment of three different heterocycles with electron donor or acceptor character to a central 1,3,5-triazine core generates readily soluble side-chain free dyes with two displaying soft crystalline mesomorphism and one displaying a nematic liquid crystal phase as confirmed by polarized optical microscopy, calorimetry, gravimetric analysis, and powder X-ray diffraction. Equally intriguing is the dyes' relatively strong electronic communication between donor and acceptor subchromophores that are meta-conjugated to one another, which is experimentally observed as a broad intramolecular charge-transfer absorption that can extend over 100 nm past the most intense absorption event and is computationally confirmed through density functional theory (DFT) evaluations of the molecular ground- and excited-state properties. This molecular design permits the preparation of dyes with panchromatic absorption not just based on the additive absorption of individual subchromophores.
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