Download or read book Chirality effects in thermotropic and lyotropic nematic liquid crystals under confined geometries written by Clarissa Dietrich and published by Cuvillier Verlag. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chirality is a phenomenon in nature that appears across all disciplines of natural science, from biology to mathematics. The spontaneous formation of chiral structures in a system of achiral components is known as spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking and is by itself of fundamental interest leading also towards the question of the origin of homochirality in nature in general. In this work, we show that by means of the topology imposed by the confining geometry and by interfacial boundary conditions – in combination with the physical properties of a liquid crystal – spontaneous mirror symmetry broken structures can be obtained. They are analyzed, inter alia, with respect to the types of geometrical confinements used, e.g. how the confinement amplifies, induces, and influences the detection of chirality effects in order to facilitate the measurement of tiny amounts of chiral additives qualitatively and quantitatively.