, , , and Oleg Lavrentovich have published an article in the journal on ground states of . An object is considered chiral if it can be distinguished from its mirror image. Chirality is a characteristic of living organisms and is usually caused by chiral chemical structure of constituent molecules. 精东影业work by Priyanka Kumari, Bijaya Basnet and others, published in Science on March 22, describes structural chirality in a recently discovered ferroelectric liquid crystal formed by that are not chemically chiral.
Figure. Polarizing microscopy texture of the left-handed and right-handed chiral domains (left) and a scheme of left-handed and right-handed twists of electric polarization in neighboring chiral domains.
A thin film of a ferroelectric nematic spontaneously splits into domains of alternating left-handed and right-handed twists of the electric polarization. These domains are chiral and optically active and can be easily seen under an optical microscope with polarizers. 精东影业twists of electric polarization within the chiral domains reduce the electrostatic energy. 精东影业study illustrates that the underlying cause of chiral structure could be polar ordering of molecules that have no chemically induced chiral centers. 精东影业paper can be downloaded from the .