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Chemical-Physical Characterization of a Binary Mixture of a Twist Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal with a Smectogen
oleh: Abir Aouini, Maurizio Nobili, Edouard Chauveau, Philippe Dieudonné-George, Gauthier Damême, Daniel Stoenescu, Ivan Dozov, Christophe Blanc
Format: | Article |
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Diterbitkan: | MDPI AG 2020-12-01 |
Deskripsi
Nematic twist-bend phases (N<sub>TB</sub>) are new types of nematic liquid crystalline phases with attractive properties for future electro-optic applications. However, most of these states are monotropic or are stable only in a narrow high temperature range. They are often destabilized under moderate cooling, and only a few single compounds have shown to give room temperature N<sub>TB</sub> phases. Mixtures of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals with simple nematogens have shown to strongly lower the nematic to N<sub>TB</sub> phase transition temperature. Here, we examined the behaviour of new types of mixtures with the dimeric liquid crystal [4′,4′-(heptane-1,7-diyl)bis(([1′,1″-biphenyl]4″-carbo-nitrile))] (CB7CB). This now well-known twist-bend nematic liquid crystal presents a nematic twist-bend phase below T ≈ 104 °C. Mixtures with other monomeric alkyl or alkoxy -biphenylcarbonitriles liquid crystals that display a smectic A (SmA) phase also strongly reduce this temperature. The most interesting smectogen is 4′-Octyl-4-biphenylcarbonitrile (8CB), for which a long-term metastable N<sub>TB</sub> phase is found at room and lower temperatures. This paper presents the complete phase diagram of the corresponding binary system and a detailed investigation of its thermal, optical, dielectric, and elastic properties.