Intrinsically chiral ferronematic liquid crystals: An inversion of the helical twist sense at the chiral nematic - Chiral ferronematic phase transition

Strongly dipolar mesogenic compounds with a chiral center located in a lateral alkyl chain were synthesized, and shown to form the ferroelectric nematic phase. The presence of molecular chirality induced a helical structure in both the N* and N-F* phases, but with opposite helix sense in the two phases. The relaxation frequency of the polar fluctuations is only weakly affected by helical structure, it was found to be slightly lower for the chiral N-F* phase than for its achiral, non-branched counterpart with the same lateral chain length. (C) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V.