Stability of the chiral crystal phase and breakdown of the cholesteric phase in mixtures of active-passive chiral rods

Chattopadhyay, J and Mandal, J and Maiti, PK (2024) Stability of the chiral crystal phase and breakdown of the cholesteric phase in mixtures of active-passive chiral rods. In: Soft Matter, 20 (11). pp. 2464-2473.

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Abstract

In this study, we aim to explore the effect of chirality on the phase behavior of active helical particles driven by two-temperature scalar activity. We first calculate the equation of state of soft helical particles of various intrinsic chiralities using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. In equilibrium, the emergence of various liquid crystal (LC) phases such as nematic (N), cholesteric , smectic (Sm) and crystal (K) crucially depends on the presence of walls that induce planar alignment. Next, we introduce activity through the two-temperature model: keep increasing the temperature of half of the helical particles (labeled as �hot� particles) while maintaining the temperature of the other half at a lower value (labeled as �cold� particles). Starting from a homogeneous isotropic (I) phase, we find the emergence of 2-TIPS: two temperature-induced phase separations between the hot and cold particles. We also observe that the cold particles undergo an ordering transition to various LC phases even in the absence of a wall. This observation reveals that the hot-cold interface in the active system plays the role of a wall in the equilibrium system by inducing an alignment direction for the cold particles. However, in the case of a cholesteric phase, we observe that activity destabilizes the phase by inducing smectic ordering in the cold zone while an isotropic structure in the hot zone. The smectic ordering in the cold zone eventually transforms to a chiral crystal phase with high enough activity. © 2024 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Soft Matter
Publisher:	Royal Society of Chemistry
Additional Information:	The copyright for this article belongs to authors.
Keywords:	Crystals; Equations of state; Molecular dynamics; Stereochemistry, Active/passive; Chiral crystals; Cholesteric phasis; Cold particles; Crystal phasis; Equation-of-state; Hot particles; Liquid crystal phase; Liquid crystal phasis; Smectic order, Chirality
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2024 11:31
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2024 11:31
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/84464

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