title: Spontaneous helix formation in non-chiral bent-core liquid crystals with fast linear electro-optic effect.
abstract: Liquid crystals (LCs) represent one of the foundations of modern communication and photonic technologies. Present display technologies are based mainly on nematic LCs, which suffer from limited response time for use in active colour sequential displays and limited image grey scale. Herein we report the first observation of a spontaneously formed helix in a polar tilted smectic LC phase (SmC phase) of achiral bent-core (BC) molecules with the axis of helix lying parallel to the layer normal and a pitch much shorter than the optical wavelength. This new phase shows fast (∼30 μs) grey-scale switching due to the deformation of the helix by the electric field. Even more importantly, defect-free alignment is easily achieved for the first time for a BC mesogen, thus providing potential use in large-scale devices with fast linear and thresholdless electro-optical response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Sithara P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Sreenilayam
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.|School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin 8, Ireland.
authors.forename: Yuri P
authors.initials: YP
authors.lastname: Panarin
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Jagdish K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Vij
authors.affiliation: Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
authors.forename: Vitaly P
authors.initials: VP
authors.lastname: Panov
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, D-06120 Halle, Germany.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, D-06120 Halle, Germany.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Poppe
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, D-06120 Halle, Germany.
authors.forename: Marko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Prehm
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, D-06120 Halle, Germany.
authors.forename: Carsten
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tschierske