Abstract
This chapter deals with the spontaneous emergence of chirality or chiral structures from materials that are achiral. It focuses on the appearance of chiral structures in the context of the simplest of the liquid crystalline phases, the nematic phase, where the constituent molecules possess long-range orientational order. It discusses the appearance of chiral structures from achiral materials, in particular, from lyotropic nematic liquid crystals (LCs). Nematic LCs possess long-range orientational order, and are characterized by an average molecular orientation along a given direction referred to as the director, specified by a non-polar unit vector or director. The confinement of LCs to curved geometry results in a much richer phenomenology. The chapter also discusses the spontaneous emergence of chiral structures from a class of LCs referred to lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals (LCLCs), as well as some lyotropic polymeric LCs. LCLCs consist of many dyes, drugs, nucleic acids, antibiotics and anti-cancer agents.
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