Electric-field-driven deracemization. |
| |
Authors: | Alexander Kane Ren-Fan Shao Joseph E Maclennan Lixing Wang David M Walba Noel A Clark |
| |
Affiliation: | Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. |
| |
Abstract: | We demonstrate, both theoretically and experimentally, that it is possible to use an electric field to drive the formation of macroscopic chiral (conglomerate) domains from an initially homogeneous fluid racemate. Field-induced segregation is exhibited in a fluid smectic liquid-crystal phase of a racemic mesogen, wherein enantiomerically-enriched domains are readily identifiable by their chiral electro-optical response. The sharp field-generated boundaries that form between opposite-handed domains broaden by diffusion in the absence of field, but reform rapidly if the field is switched on again, providing unambiguous evidence for the field-driven physical separation of enantiomers. A mean-field model successfully describes the steady-state and the dynamic evolution of conglomerate formation. |
| |
Keywords: | chirality electric field enantiomers liquid crystals mean‐field model |
|
|