The York Research Database

The twist‐bend modulated nematic liquid crystal phase exhibits phenomena of fundamental importance to science; the formation of a helical pitch of nanometre scale in a fluid and the spontaneous breaking of mirror symmetry leading to a quasi‐fluid state composed of chiral domains despite being composed of an achiral material. We note that this phase has only been observed for materials with two or more mesogenic units, the manner of attachment between which is always linear. In this communication we report on non‐linear oligomers, with a H‐shaped hexamesogen found to exhibit both nematic and twist‐bend modulated nematic phases. This shatters the widely held assumption that a linear sequence of mesogenic units is a prerequisite for this phase, and points to this state of matter being exhibited by a much wider range of self‐assembling structures than was previously envisaged. The present results support the double helix model of the TB phase as opposed to the simple heliconical model. This new class of materials has the potential to act as low molecular weight surrogates for cross linked liquid‐crystalline elastomers.