Supermolecular stereochemistry in ferroelectric liquid crystals

Until recently, it was an empirical fact that chiral liquid crystal phases were produced only from enantiomerically enriched liquid crystal materials. Ferroelectric smectic liquid crystals have always been composed of enantio merically enriched molecules as well. Here we describe the first example of the formation of chiral supermolecular liquid crystalline structures from achiral bent-core molecules (bow phases or banana phases). In one case, a m etastable antiferroelectric bow-phase structure is macroscopically chiral, with bulk samples composed of chiral macroscopic domains of either handedne ss. This system represents the first known Liquid conglomerate. In addition , based upon a directed design approach exploiting control of interlayer cl inicity, a ferroelectric liquid crystal; conglomerate has been created from a racemic mixture. In this case bulk ferroelectricity is obtained by spont aneous polar symmetry breaking. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.