title: Topological defects in cholesteric liquid crystals induced by monolayer domains with orientational chirality.
abstract: Unless stabilized by colloids or confinement with well-defined boundary conditions, defects in liquid crystals remain elusive short-lived objects that tend to disappear with time to minimize the medium's free energy. In this work we use multimodal three-dimensional imaging to visualize cholesteric director structures to show that self-assembled chiral molecular monolayer domains can stabilize topologically constrained defect configurations when in contact with a cholesteric liquid crystal. The cholesteric liquid crystal, having features of both coarse-grained lamellar and nematic liquid crystal with chiral symmetry breaking, allows us to explore the interplay of chirality and implications of layering on the formed defects and director configurations.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Química Física and Institut de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (IN2UB), Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès 1, 08028 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. jignes@ub.edu.
authors.forename: Núria
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Petit-Garrido
authors.forename: Rahul P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Trivedi
authors.forename: Francesc
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Sagués
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ignés-Mullol
authors.forename: Ivan I
authors.initials: II
authors.lastname: Smalyukh