New liquid crystal formation induced by nano-scale phase separation composed of a bent-core liquid crystal and rod-like choresteric liquid crystal mixtures

Abstract

We studied the local nano-structure analysis in mixtures of cholesteric liquid crystal mixture and a bent-core molecule using small-angle X-ray scattering. We obtained different types of the orientational X-ray patterns, suggesting the different types of the nano-scale phase separation. It depends on the cooling rate from the isotropic phase, so that it is related with the kinetics of phase separation process. In the gradual cooling a new structure with the smectic order stably appears, and this smectic order enhancement is considered to be caused by the B4 filament. Furthermore, it is found that the system composed of the rod-like molecules and bent-core molecules does not only causes a simple phase separation.