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Updated: Sep 23, 2025

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal
Published on: October 31, 2019
Effect of terminal chain length on the helical twisting power in achiral bent-core molecules doped in a cholesteric
Byeong-Cheon Kim1, Martin Walker2, Seong-Yong Jo1
1Department of Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics (BK21Plus), Kyung Hee University Yongin-shi Gyeonggi-do 17104 Korea schoi@khu.ac.kr.
Abstract:
We prepared a homologous series of achiral bent-core (BC) liquid crystals with different terminal alkoxy chain lengths, n (BC-n), and evaluated the helical twisting power (HTP) of the BC-n doped in a cholesteric liquid crystal. The BC-n molecules with longer terminal chains showed larger HTPs. To interpret this striking phenomenon, a stochastic dynamics simulation was performed to determine the distribution of the chirality order parameters (χ) for BC molecules with n = 8-16. The distribution of χ for each simulated conformation varied with n, and the variation tendency was different for molecules with n < 12 and n > 12 despite the linear relationship between HTP and n in the experiment.
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