Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Polydisperse Achiral Near-Rigid Nematogens
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arXiv
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866908796971909120 |
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| author | Fall, William S. Wensink, Henricus H. |
| author_facet | Fall, William S. Wensink, Henricus H. |
| contents | Understanding chirality transfer from the molecular to the macroscopic scale poses a significant challenge in soft and biological condensed matter physics. Many nanorods of biological origin not only have chiral molecular features but also exhibit a spread in contour length leading to considerable size dispersity. On top of this, random backbone fluctuations are ubiquitous for non-rigid particles but their role in chirality transfer remains difficult to disentangle from that of their native chirality imparted by their effective shape or surface architecture. We report spontaneous entropy-driven chiral symmetry breaking from molecular simulations of cholesteric liquid-crystals formed from achiral bead-spring rods with a continuous spread in contour length and marginal chain bending. The symmetry-breaking is caused by long-lived chiral conformations of long rods undergoing chiral synchronization leading to a homochiral twisted nematic. A simple theory demonstrates that even without chiral synchronization, the presence of shape-persistent configurational fluctuations along with length-dispersity can be harnessed to generate non-zero chirality at moderate polydispersity. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_16526 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Polydisperse Achiral Near-Rigid Nematogens Fall, William S. Wensink, Henricus H. Soft Condensed Matter Materials Science Statistical Mechanics Understanding chirality transfer from the molecular to the macroscopic scale poses a significant challenge in soft and biological condensed matter physics. Many nanorods of biological origin not only have chiral molecular features but also exhibit a spread in contour length leading to considerable size dispersity. On top of this, random backbone fluctuations are ubiquitous for non-rigid particles but their role in chirality transfer remains difficult to disentangle from that of their native chirality imparted by their effective shape or surface architecture. We report spontaneous entropy-driven chiral symmetry breaking from molecular simulations of cholesteric liquid-crystals formed from achiral bead-spring rods with a continuous spread in contour length and marginal chain bending. The symmetry-breaking is caused by long-lived chiral conformations of long rods undergoing chiral synchronization leading to a homochiral twisted nematic. A simple theory demonstrates that even without chiral synchronization, the presence of shape-persistent configurational fluctuations along with length-dispersity can be harnessed to generate non-zero chirality at moderate polydispersity. |
| title | Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Polydisperse Achiral Near-Rigid Nematogens |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter Materials Science Statistical Mechanics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.16526 |