Comment on "Coarsening in bent-core liquid crystals: a molecular dynamics study" by N. Birdi, N. B. Wilding, S. Puri and V. Banerjee, <i>Soft Matter</i>, 2025, <b>21</b>, 4606.

Tomczyk, Wojciech; Kubala, Piotr · Soft Matter · 2026

other · Level V

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Abstract

In the study by Birdi <i>et al.</i> molecular dynamics simulations were employed to investigate the coarsening dynamics of bent-core liquid crystals with a focus on the phase transition from a polar smectic X phase to the chiral twist-bend phase. A key finding is the emergence of an intermediate splay-bend phase before the system reaches the stable twist-bend phase. In this comment, we rectify the erroneous assumption that led to the improper conclusions and elucidate that the intermediate system studied by Birdi <i>et al.</i> is either a disordered smectic X (banana phase B1) or splay-bend smectic.