Chiral Interactions and Structures

TL;DR

This paper discusses a systematic method to quantify molecular chirality and how these parameters can predict the macroscopic chiral structures in liquid crystalline phases, bridging molecular properties with bulk behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a new systematic approach to quantify molecular chirality and links it to the prediction of liquid crystal structures.

Findings

Molecular chirality can be systematically quantified.

Chiral parameters can predict macroscopic liquid crystal structures.

The approach bridges molecular properties with bulk chiral behavior.

Abstract

The chiral structure of liquid crystalline phases arises due to the intrinsic chirality of the constituent mesogens. While it is seemingly straightforward to quantify the macroscopic chirality by using, for instance, the cholesteric pitch or the optical rotatory power, it is not as simple to quantify the chirality of a single molecule. I will discuss a systematic quantification of molecular chirality and show how the resulting chiral parameters may be used to predict macroscopic chiral structure.