Fig. 1: Schematic depictions of polar and apolar liquid crystal phases and materials. | Nature Communications

Fig. 1: Schematic depictions of polar and apolar liquid crystal phases and materials.

From: Spontaneous symmetry breaking in polar fluids

Fig. 1

a Apolar nematic; b polar nematic; c the structures of the exemplar NF materials: UUQU-4-N19; DIO15; RM73443 and, d apolar and e polar smectic A phases. The lack of inversion symmetry within the polar variants of the N and SmA phases results in both phases possessing C∞v symmetry with the polarization direction parallel to the director \(\hat{{{{{{\rm{n}}}}}}}\) along the long molecular axes.

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