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Search For Biaxiality In A Shape-Persistent Bent-Core Nematic Liquid Crystal, Young-Ki Kim, Madhabi Majumdar, Bohdan I. Senyuk, Luana Tortora, Jens Seltmann, Matthias Lehmann, Antal Jakli, Jim T. Gleeson, Oleg Lavrentovich, Samuel Sprunt
Search For Biaxiality In A Shape-Persistent Bent-Core Nematic Liquid Crystal, Young-Ki Kim, Madhabi Majumdar, Bohdan I. Senyuk, Luana Tortora, Jens Seltmann, Matthias Lehmann, Antal Jakli, Jim T. Gleeson, Oleg Lavrentovich, Samuel Sprunt
Antal Jakli
Using a range of optical techniques, we have probed the nature of orientational order in a thermotropic bent-core liquid crystal, which features a shape-persistent molecular architecture designed to promote a biaxial nematic phase. In the upper range of the nematic phase (enantiotropic regime), dynamic light scattering reveals strong fluctuations attributable to the biaxial order parameter, in addition to the usual uniaxial director modes. Assuming a Landau-type expansion of the orientational free energy, we estimate the correlation length associated with these fluctuations to be similar to 100 nm. At lower temperatures, and mainly in the monotropic regime of the nematic, we …