PB15 Chirality-sensitive anomalous liquid crystal phases produced by non-symmetric chiral twin liquid crystals

Abstract

A novel strategy for preparing non-symmetric chiral twin liquid crystals was proposed, where two identical chiral moieties were designed to be located at the both peripheral ends and the non-symmetric character was introduced by the non-symmetric central connecting structure. Optically active homologues showed two anomalous phases between the smectic and isotropic liquid phases. The lower-temperature phase was optically isotropic under the polarized light microscopy, whereas the high-temperature phase showed a mosaic texture. Both of the phases showed a layered structure with a smaller layer spacing than the smectic phase. With a reduction of the optical purity, these phases disappeared but the Twist Grain Boundary phase was observed.