Utilising Saturated Hydrocarbon Isosteres of para Benzene in the Design of Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystals

The nematic twist-bend (N_TB) liquid crystal phase possesses a local helical structure with a pitch length of a few nanometres and is the first example of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a fluid system. All known examples of the N_TB phase occur in materials whose constituent mesogenic units are aromatic hydrocarbons. It is not clear if this is due to synthetic convenience or a bona fide structural requirement for a material to exhibit this phase of matter. In this work we demonstrate that materials consisting largely of saturated hydrocarbons can also give rise to this mesophase.