Probing and controlling liquid crystal helical nanofilaments.

Zhu, Chenhui; Wang, Cheng; Young, Anthony; Liu, Feng; Gunkel, Ilja; Chen, Dong; Walba, David; Maclennan, Joseph et al. · Nano Lett · 2015

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report the first in situ measurement of the helical pitch of the helical nanofilament B4 phase of bent-core liquid crystals using linearly polarized, resonant soft X-ray scattering at the carbon K-edge. A strong, anisotropic scattering peak corresponding to the half-pitch of the twisted smectic layer structure was observed. The equilibrium helical half-pitch of NOBOW is found to be 120 nm, essentially independent of temperature. However, the helical pitch can be tuned by mixing guest organic molecules with the bent-core host, followed by thermal annealing.