Chiral configurations from racemic lyotropic polymer liquid crystals under cylindrical confinement.*

The emergence of chiral structures from achiral molecules inspires scientists about the origin of chirality in nature. Recently, chiral configurations have been reported on confining achiral lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals and micellar liquid crystals to cylindrical and spherical geometries. Emergence of chirality in these systems has been attributed to small twist elastic constant and curved surfaces of confinement. In this work, we studied a racemic lyotropic polymer liquid crystal in cylindrical capillaries. Although the polymer liquid crystal is composed of much longer molecules, it also has a small twist elastic constant and exhibits the same chiral configurations as chromonics and micelles. Additionally, we exploited the chiral configurations to estimate the saddle-splay elastic constant and anchoring strength on the surface. Our work suggests that the emergence of chirality widely exists for all types of achiral lyotropic liquid crystals. And the small twist elastic constant seems to be a common property of all lyotropics. This generalization stimulates fundamental understanding about configurational and elastic behavior of lyotropic system.