Helical Nanofilaments and the High Chiralty Limit of Smectics A

Liquid crystalline systems exhibiting both macroscopic chirality and smectic order experience frustration resulting in mesophases possessing complex three-dimensional order. In the twist-grainboundary phase, defect lattices mediate the propagation of twist throughout the system. We propose a new chiral smectic structure composed of a lattice of chiral bundles as a model of the helical nanofilament (B4) phase of bent-core smectics.