Amplification of chirality of lyotropic chromic liquid crystals confined to capillaries.

In recent years, intensive research has been conducted with the focus on amplification of chirality in the liquid crystalline system for applications including chiral supramolecular assemblies, smart materials, and the development of liquid crystal displays. Lyotropic chromic liquid crystals (LCLC) molecules are achiral, that have plank-like rigid aromatic cores and hydrophilic ionic groups at the peripheries. Upon confinement of LCLCs in cylindrical capillary, the director adopts a doubly twisted director configuration, and possess multi domain with equal probability of both handedness which is separated by Neel walls. In this work, we observed that by adding minute amount of chiral molecules to racemic mixtures, the whole system can be transformed into one type of structural handedness. When we added L-alanine and D-alanine, we can see that the minute amount of these chiral materials broke the parity and dominate the capillaries with left and right handed structure, respectively. The structure and charge of the chiral molecules were also studied. By investigating the effect of various chiral molecules within this LCLCs in capillary system, we expect to understand chirality amplification mechanisms.