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Science 24 July 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5939, pp. 452 - 456
DOI: 10.1126/science.1170028
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Reports

Chiral Isotropic Liquids from Achiral Molecules

L. E. Hough,1,* M. Spannuth,1 M. Nakata,1,{dagger} D. A. Coleman,1 C. D. Jones,1 G. Dantlgraber,2 C. Tschierske,2 J. Watanabe,3 E. Körblova,4 D. M. Walba,4 J. E. Maclennan,1 M. A. Glaser,1 N. A. Clark1,*

A variety of simple bent-core molecules exhibit smectic liquid crystal phases of planar fluid layers that are spontaneously both polar and chiral in the absence of crystalline order. We found that because of intralayer structural mismatch, such layers are also only marginally stable against spontaneous saddle splay deformation, which is incompatible with long-range order. This results in macroscopically isotropic fluids that possess only short-range orientational and positional order, in which the only macroscopically broken symmetry is chirality—even though the phases are formed from achiral molecules. Their conglomerate domains exhibit optical rotatory powers comparable to the highest ever found for isotropic fluids of chiral molecules.

1 Department of Physics and Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.
2 Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Halle-Wittenberg, D-06120 Halle (Saale), Germany.
3 Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Tokyo Institute of Technology, O-okayama 2-12-1, Meguro-Ku, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
4 Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Liquid Crystal Materials Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.

{dagger} Deceased.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: hough{at}colorado.edu (L.E.H.); hough{at}colorado.edu (N.A.C.)

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
How Deformation Can Lend a Hand to Molecular Ordering.
D. B. Amabilino (2009)
Science 325, 402-403
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