Computer simulation study of novel chiral liquid crystal phases

Origin and structure of liquid crystalline Blue Phase III

“…4a-e shifting of the cylindrical cross-section positions in different planes indicates cylinder twist in BPIII. Figure 4f-h show that the encircled cross-sections of the double-twist cylinders for BPI phase, obtained with lower value of c = 1.0 19 , are at same positions on each layer. Thus, in case of other BPs, i.e.…”

“…2) show qualitatively the same variation as that of a Blue phase, i.e. depending on pitch length they vary approximately as sinusoidal functions with distance 19,20 but the plots are not smooth, because in BPIII cylinders formed from twisted molecular arrangements are themselves twisted and are having comparatively shorter lengths, but in other Blue phases twisted molecular organization makes double-twist cylinders with straight-line symmetry axes spanning over the whole system. www.nature.com/scientificreports/ For other chiral phases obtained with lower c values, these plots were quite smooth and showed sinusoidal type variation 19,20 indicating the presence of definite orientational correlation between the molecules spreading over the whole simulation box.…”

“…Additionally, we have checked the effect of dipole strength on the layer formation 19,32 . The presence of dipoles gives more stability to the smectic layers.…”

“…For this reason, MD simulation is much expensive computationally 30,31 . To understand the phase structure of polar chiral liquid crystal molecules, we have used an NVT algorithm in this work which is developed by us and used in our earlier works 19,32 .…”

“…Vol:. (1234567890) Scientific RepoRtS | (2020) 10:16016 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-72086-4www.nature.com/scientificreports/ opposite face of the simulation box19,20 , whereas here these BPIII cylinders terminate at some intermediate plane instead of spanning over the whole box.To study length dependence, we have considered κ (length to breadth ratio) = 4.0 and 5.0 in addition to the previous κ = 3.0 case. Values of ρ * for different κ 's have been taken equal to 0.19 for κ = 4.0 and 0.12 for κ = 5.0 .…”