Investigation for correlation between elastic constant and thermal stability of liquid crystalline blue phase I

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between the elastic constants of host nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) and the thermal stability of their liquid crystalline blue phase I (BPI). By adding bent-core molecules to a conventional NLC, we could gradually increase (decrease) the elastic constant K₁₁ (K₃₃). We confirmed experimentally that the thermal stability of BPI strongly depends on the ratio of the elastic constants K₁₁ and K₃₃ of the host NLCs; the stability increases with decreasing K₃₃/K₁₁ particularly when it is less than unity, being consistent with the theoretical prediction.