Spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking in the formation of bicontinuous cubic phases by BABH-based achiral single molecules and mixtures

Abstract

Recently, a chirality was found in the so-called “Im3m” phase, and Ungar and Tschierske et al. attempted to explain the emergence of the chirality on the basis of the triple network model, but the random placement of defects had to be assumed in the propagation of molecular twist. In this presentation, we propose a new chiral “Im3m” model with complete propagation of molecular twist; the problem has been resolved with a basic structure consisting of non-connected shells and a network proposed by the present authors. The second topic is that the chiral cubic phase is realized by mixing two achiral molecules forming the Ia3d-gyroid phase.