Chirality issues and interesting properties of achiral and racemic materials with bent molecular structures

Spontaneous symmetry breaking in achiral and racemic materials is reviewed in terms of the so-called banana-shaped liquid crystal materials. Some novel results are reported in the area of conventional liquid crystal phases generated by achiral, bent-shaped molecular architectures where the smectic C phase is seen to consist of domains of opposite handedness in equal proportion. Moreover, an analogous racemic material was found to generate a liquid crystal phase that showed only one handedness. Other materials based on the same bent-core architecture were found to generate a nematic phase that also consists of domains of opposite handedness in equal proportion. This nematic phase was also found not to show any areas of homeotropic alignment.