Liquid-crystalline smectic blue phases

Abstract

Smectic blue phases (BP_Sm) are new mesophases of thermotropic liquid crystals, which exhibit a double geometrical frustration: the extension of chirality in three spatial dimensions like the classical blue phases, and helical twist competing with smectic order, as in the TGB phases. The existence of a quasi-long range smectic order in BP_Sm phases breaks the cubic symmetry of classical blue phases. The symmetries of these new phases have been determined by X-ray scattering and optical polarizing microscopy experiments.