Novel chiral smectic phase generation in systems of polar ellipsoidal molecules with reflection asymmetry: A molecular dynamics simulation study

Abstract

Computer simulation study of phase transitional behaviour of cholesterol molecules embedded with terminal dipole is reported. In this work, coarse-grained modeling of cholesteric molecules is done to study the influence of the coupled chiral and dipolar interactions on macroscopic liquid-crystalline phase formation. This NVT molecular dynamics simulation study demonstrates the formaton of novel Smectic Blue phase (BP\textsubscript{Sm}) which is a recent experimentally discovered chiral phase. Our study reveals that the higher strength of chiral interaction induces blue phase, whereas, larger dipolar interaction can bring bilayered smectic blue phase.