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Chiral Symmetry Breaking By Spatial Confinement In Tactoidal Droplets Of Lyotropic Chromonic Liquid Crystals, Luana Tortora, Oleg Lavrentovich

Oleg Lavrentovich

In many colloidal systems, an orientationally ordered nematic (N) phase emerges fromthe isotropic (I) melt in the form of spindle-like birefringent tactoids. In cases studied so far, the tactoids always reveal a mirror-symmetric nonchiral structure, sometimes even when the building units are chiral. We report on chiral symmetry breaking in the nematic tactoids formed in molecularly nonchiral polymer-crowded aqueous solutions of low-molecular weight disodium cromoglycate. The parity is broken by twisted packing of self-assembled molecular aggregates within the tactoids as manifested by the observed optical activity. Fluorescent confocal microscopy reveals that the chiral N tactoids are located at the boundaries …