Spontaneous Appearance of Chiral Structures from Lyotropic Liquid Crystals in Confinement

Optical activity, a consequence of reflection-symmetry breaking, since the time of its discovery by Biot in the early 1800s, has captivated the imagination of scientists. Since Pasteur’s time, the appearance of macroscopic chirality during crystallization from both chiral and achiral molecules has frequently been observed. Crystallization apart, optical activity resulting from achiral units has been observed in liquid crystals, and polymeric materials, without a molecular chiral center.

In this talk, I intend to discuss the appearance of chiral structures from a class of liquid crystals, the so-called lyotropic liquid crystals. In particular, in recent years there has been significant research conducted on a class materials known as Lyotropic Chromonic Liquid Crystals (LCLCs). LCLCs consist of many dyes, drugs, nucleic acids, antibiotics, carcinogens and anti-cancer agents. I will explore the spontaneous emergence of chiral structures from achiral lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals as well as polymeric lyotropic systems, when confined to cylindrical capillaries with various boundary conditions, as well as in capillaries with rectangular and square cross-sections.