Recently, there has been a surge of interest in mesogens exhibiting the twist-bend nematic (NTB) phase that is shown to be chiral even though formed by effectively achiral molecules. Although it now seems to be clear that the NTB phase in the bulk is formed by degenerate domains having opposite handedness, the presence of a supramolecular heliconical structure proposed in the Dozov model has been contradicted by the Hoffmann et al. model in which the heliconical arrangement is replaced by a polar nematic phase. The evidence in support of this is that the quadrupolar splitting tensor measured in various experiments is uniaxial and not biaxial as expected for the twist-bend nematic structure. In this debate, among other evidence, the molecular translational diffusion, and its magnitude with respect to that in the nematic phase above the NTB phase, has also been invoked to eliminate or to confirm one model or the other. We attempt to resolve this issue by reporting the first measurements of the translational self-diffusion coefficients in the nematic and twist-bend nematic phases formed 1″,7″-bis-4-(4′-cyanobiphenyl-4′-yl) heptane (CB7CB). Such measurements certainly appear to resolve the differences between the two models in favour of that for the classic twist-bend nematic phase.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)204-218
Number of pages15
JournalLiquid Crystals
Volume44
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2 Jan 2017

    Scopus subject areas

  • Chemistry(all)
  • Materials Science(all)
  • Condensed Matter Physics

    Research areas

  • local phase biaxiality, macroscopic rotational diffusion, molecular translational diffusion coefficients, motional averaging, residual quadrupolar tensors, Twist-bend nematic

ID: 48943546