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Updated: Aug 22, 2025

Measuring Magnetically-Tuned Ferroelectric Polarization in Liquid Crystals
Published on: August 15, 2018
Polarisation-driven magneto-optical and nonlinear-optical behaviour of a room-temperature ferroelectric nematic phase
Evangelia Zavvou1,2, Melanie Klasen-Memmer3, Atsutaka Manabe3
1Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Institute of Physics, Dept. Nonlinear Phenomena, Magdeburg, Germany. alexey.eremin@ovgu.de.
Abstract:
Nematics with a broken polar symmetry are one of the fascinating recent discoveries in the field of soft matter. High spontaneous polarisation and the fluidity of the ferroelectric nematic NF phase make such materials attractive for future applications and interesting for fundamental research. Here, we explore the polar and mechanical properties of a room-temperature ferroelectric nematic and its behaviour in a magnetic field. We show that NF is much less susceptible to the splay deformation than to the twist. The strong splay rigidity can be attributed to the electrostatic self-interaction of polarisation avoiding the polarisation splay.
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