Attempt to spontaneous chiral induction in columnar liquid crystal phases

Abstract

Chiral induction is a phenomenon in which chirality is induced from achiral molecules, which often occurs in crystal phases but less likely occurs in liquid crystal phases. As for previous studies in liquid crystal phases, many examples of spontaneous chiral induction in banana-shaped molecules have been reported, but they are limited to liquid crystalline phases other than columnar liquid crystalline phases. In this study, we attempted spontaneous asymmetric induction in columnar liquid crystal phases, driven by the packing of the bent terminal chains in a column.