Issue 14, 2021

Emergence and stabilization of transient twisted defect structures in confined achiral liquid crystals at a phase transition

Abstract

Spontaneous emergence of chirality is a pervasive theme in soft matter. We report a transient twist forming in achiral nematic liquid crystals confined to a capillary tube with square cross section. At the smectic–nematic phase transition, intertwined disclination line pairs are observed with both helical and kinked lozenge-like contours, configurations that we promote through capillary cross-section geometry and stabilize using fluorescent amphiphilic molecules. The observed texture is similar to that found in “exotic” materials such as chromonics, but it is here observed in common thermotropic nematics upon heating from the smectic into the nematic phase. Numerical modeling further reveals that the disclinations may possess winding characters that are intermediate between wedge and twist, and that vary along the defect contours. In our experiments, we utilize a phase transition to generate otherwise elusive defect structures in common liquid crystal materials.

Graphical abstract: Emergence and stabilization of transient twisted defect structures in confined achiral liquid crystals at a phase transition

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Nov 2020
Accepted
24 Mar 2021
First published
26 Mar 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Soft Matter, 2021,17, 3848-3854

Emergence and stabilization of transient twisted defect structures in confined achiral liquid crystals at a phase transition

J. X. Velez, Z. Zheng, D. A. Beller and F. Serra, Soft Matter, 2021, 17, 3848 DOI: 10.1039/D0SM02040K

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