Simulation of the macroscopic pitch of a chiral nematic phase of a model chiral mesogen

Abstract

We examine the effect of molecular chirality on the cholesteric phase of hard spherocylinders with a chiral dispersion potential. Monte Carlo simulations are performed under standard periodic boundary conditions (PBCs), and under confinement between two parallel hard walls. The use of PBCs constrains the helical pitch to be an integer fraction of the box dimension, while the pitch of the confined system decreases as the strength of the chiral interaction is increased. For a chiral interaction which is of the order of thermal energy, a pitch of a few hundred nanometers (much greater than the sample dimension) is observed.