Multi-level chirality in liquid crystals formed by achiral molecules

Mirosław Salamończyk, Nataša Vaupotič (), Damian Pociecha, Rebecca Walker, John M. D. Storey, Corrie T. Imrie, Cheng Wang, Chenhui Zhu and Ewa Gorecka ()
Additional contact information
Mirosław Salamończyk: University of Warsaw
Nataša Vaupotič: University of Maribor
Damian Pociecha: University of Warsaw
Rebecca Walker: University of Aberdeen
John M. D. Storey: University of Aberdeen
Corrie T. Imrie: University of Aberdeen
Cheng Wang: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Chenhui Zhu: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Ewa Gorecka: University of Warsaw

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Complex materials often exhibit a hierarchical structure with an intriguing mechanism responsible for the ‘propagation’ of order from the molecular to the nano- or micro-scale level. In particular, the chirality of biological molecules such as nucleic acids and amino acids is responsible for the helical structure of DNA and proteins, which in turn leads to the lack of mirror symmetry of macro-bio-objects. To fully understand mechanisms of cross-level order transfer there is an intensive search for simpler artificial structures exhibiting hierarchical arrangement. Here we present complex systems built of achiral molecules that show four levels of structural chirality: layer chirality, helicity of a basic repeating unit, mesoscopic helix and helical filaments. The structures are identified by a combination of hard and soft x-ray diffraction measurements, optical studies and theoretical modelling. Similarly to many biological systems, the studied materials exhibit a coupling between chirality at different levels.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09862-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-09862-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09862-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().