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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
Published on: October 31, 2019
Pseudolayered structure of the columnar B1 phase of bent-core liquid crystals
J Martinez-Perdiguero1, J Etxebarria, C L Folcia
1Departamento de Micro- y Nanotecnología, Tekniker, Eibar 20600, Spain.
Abstract:
Three bent-core liquid-crystal compounds presenting the unusual columnar B1 to tilted polar smectic (Sm-CP or B2) phase transition are studied through small-angle x-ray diffraction on aligned samples. The well-established character of the smectic phase helps to characterize the structural changes during the transition. A mechanism for this transition is proposed, which accounts for the low enthalpy usually observed in this process. The B1 phase is found to possess a great degree of lamellarization, with pseudosmectic ferroelectric layers along the crystallographic (11) planes. As a consequence of these observations a distribution of the block polarizations in the columnar structure is proposed.
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