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The smectic Z~A~ phase: Antiferroelectric smectic order as a prelude to the ferroelectric nematic by Xi Chen; Vikina Martinez; Eva Korblova; Guillaume Freychet; Mikhail Zhernenkov; Matthew A. Glaser; Cheng Wang; Chenhui Zhu; Leo Radzihovsky; Joseph E. Maclennan; David M. Walba; Noel A. Clark is a Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Significance A persistent theme that has emerged from the century-long experimental and theoretical study of ferroelectric crystals and liquid crystals is that ferroelectricity and antiferroelectricity go hand-in-hand, such that if one is found, the other will also be in the same or closely related families of materials. At the root of this behavior is the frustration inherent in steric and electrostatic dipolar interactions, exemplified by the latter, for which dipole pairs arranged end-to-end prefer to be parallel, while dipole side-by-side pairs prefer to be antiparallel. Here, we show that the unexpected recent discovery of the ferroelectric nematic phase and its nearly perfect ferroelectric polar order, is a pathway to antiferroelectricity in fluids, realized in a lamellar smectic array of fluid sheets of alternating polarity.

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Author

Xi Chen; Vikina Martinez; Eva Korblova; Guillaume Freychet; Mikhail Zhernenkov; Matthew A. Glaser; Cheng Wang; Chenhui Zhu; Leo Radzihovsky; Joseph E. Maclennan; David M. Walba; Noel A. Clark

Publisher

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Published

2023

Language

EN

Field

Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (Life Sciences)