Chiral doping effect in the B2 phase of a bent-core liquid crystal: The observation of resonant X-ray satellite peaks assigned to the 5/10 layer periodic structure

We studied the details of a local layer structure in the B2 phase of bromo-containing bent-core liquid crystals mixed with a small amount of chiral molecules using microbeam resonant X-ray scattering. In this measurement, we detected the 1 +/- 0.2 order satellite peaks, which suggest that the B2 phase of the mixture has a long-range periodic structure. Dielectric and electro-optic measurements indicate almost the same behavior as the antiferroelectric SmCAPA(B2) of pure bromo-containing bent-core liquid crystals, so that the B2 phase of the chiral mixture is also antiferroelectric, and it is concluded that the B2 phase of the chiral mixture forms a ten-layer periodic structure. Such a long-range periodic structure did not appear by mixing the racemate of the same compounds, which indicates the chiral effect on the long-range periodic structure. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2015