Theoretical Remarks on Cybotactic Clusters of Bent-Core Nematic Liquid Crystals in 1D Settings

TL;DR

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of cybotactic clusters in bent-core nematic liquid crystals using a 1D Landau-deGennes model, revealing how spatial confinement and coupling influence cluster formation and phase transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 1D theoretical model to study the effects of confinement and coupling on cybotactic clusters in bent-core nematic LCs, aligning with recent experimental observations.

Findings

Coupling enhances cluster order parameter significantly.

Spatial confinement affects the formation of cybotactic clusters.

Possible transition to weak nematic-like phase near the nematic-isotropic transition.

Abstract

The bent-core liquid crystals (LCs) are highly regarded as the next-generation materials for electro-optic devices. The nematic (N) phase of these LCs possesses highly ordered smectic-like cybotactic clusters which are promising in terms of ferroelectric-like behaviour in the N phase itself. We have studied a one-dimensional (1D) Landau-deGennes model of spatially inhomogeneous order parameters for the N phase of bent-core LCs. We investigate the effects of spatial confinement and coupling (between these clusters and the surrounding LC molecules) on the order parameters to model cluster formation in recently reported experiments. The coupling is found to increase the cluster order parameter significantly, suggesting an enhancement in the cluster formation and could also predict a possible transition to a phase with weak nematic-like ordering in the vicinity of nematic-isotropic transition upon appreciable increase of the coupling parameter {\gamma}.