A chameleon chiral polar liquid crystal: Rod-shaped when nematic, bent-shaped when smectic

The first antiferroelectric liquid crystal (AFLC) exhibiting a (chiral) nematic phase, a combination which has long been the goal of synthetic chemists working with polar liquid crystals but which at the same time represents a fundamental contradiction in terms of translational order, was recently reported by Nishiyama and co-workers. We have investi- gated this chiral twin dimer by optic, electrooptic, and dielectric methods and conclude that it is not an ordinary AFLC material, but one where the peculiar properties of bent-core smectics are combined with those of ordinary rod-shaped liquid crystals. The compound exhibits a new type of nematic-smectic phase transition, connected with a change of molecule conformation from rod- to bent-shaped. This also has an important impact on the chiral interactions in the system. Toward the high-temperature end of the smectic phase, the energy balance between bent conformation smectic and straight conformation nematic can be shifted by an electric field such that the transition to the nematic phase with stretched-out molecules can be field-induced.