Month/Year of Graduation

5-2019

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

Department

Physics

Abstract

Of the new discoveries in liquid crystal phases, of which one of the most significant is the nematic twist-bend (NTB), a heliconical phase often exhibited by flexible bent dimers with an odd-numbered methylene bridge, there is currently a lack of consistency on reported sub-phases formed by nematic twist-bend mesogens with chirality-breaking constituents which have displayed multiple possible sub-phases. Here, we consider the achiral dimer mixture KA(0.2) doped with varying weight percent (χ%) of a chiral rod-like dimer ZLI-811. Previous characterization techniques such as differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), resonant soft X-ray scattering (RSoXS), and circular dichroism (CD) have displayed features suggesting a possible phase called the twist-bend twist grain boundary (TGBTB). With the addition of polarized optical microscopy (POM) and optical differential scanning (ODS) measurements, we present further investigation into the effects of chiral dopants in achiral flexible bent dimer mixtures, and the optical features expressed by this novel phase.

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