Novel chiral smectic phase generation in systems of polar ellipsoidal molecules with reflection asymmetry: A molecular dynamics simulation study

TL;DR

This study uses molecular dynamics simulations to explore how chiral and dipolar interactions in polar ellipsoidal molecules lead to the formation of novel smectic blue phases, advancing understanding of liquid crystal phase behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a coarse-grained simulation approach to demonstrate the formation of a new smectic blue phase influenced by chiral and dipolar interactions.

Findings

Higher chiral interaction strength induces blue phase.

Larger dipolar interactions lead to bilayered smectic blue phase.

Simulation results align with recent experimental discoveries.

Abstract

Computer simulation study of phase transitional behaviour of cholesterol molecules embedded with terminal dipole is reported. In this work, coarse-grained modeling of cholesteric molecules is done to study the influence of the coupled chiral and dipolar interactions on macroscopic liquid-crystalline phase formation. This NVT molecular dynamics simulation study demonstrates the formaton of novel Smectic Blue phase (BP\textsubscript{Sm}) which is a recent experimentally discovered chiral phase. Our study reveals that the higher strength of chiral interaction induces blue phase, whereas, larger dipolar interaction can bring bilayered smectic blue phase.