Issue 44, 2015

A novel chiral phase of achiral hard triangles and an entropy-driven demixing of enantiomers

Abstract

We investigate the phase behavior of a system of hard equilateral and right-angled triangles in two dimensions using Monte Carlo simulations. Hard equilateral triangles undergo a continuous isotropic–triatic liquid crystal phase transition at packing fraction ϕ = 0.7. Similarly, hard right-angled isosceles triangles exhibit a first-order phase transition from an isotropic fluid phase to a rhombic liquid crystal phase with a coexistence region ϕ ∈ [0.733, 0.782]. Both these liquid crystals undergo a continuous phase transition to their respective close-packed crystal structures at high pressures. Although the particles and their close-packed crystals are both achiral, the solid phases of equilateral and right-angled triangles exhibit spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking at sufficiently high packing fractions. The colloidal triangles rotate either in the clockwise or anti-clockwise direction with respect to one of the lattice vectors for packing fractions higher than ϕχ. As a consequence, these triangles spontaneously form a regular lattice of left- or right-handed chiral holes which are surrounded by six triangles in the case of equilateral triangles and four or eight triangles for right-angled triangles. Moreover, our simulations show a spontaneous entropy-driven demixing transition of the right- and left-handed “enantiomers”.

Graphical abstract: A novel chiral phase of achiral hard triangles and an entropy-driven demixing of enantiomers

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Jul 2015
Accepted
09 Sep 2015
First published
09 Sep 2015
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Soft Matter, 2015,11, 8684-8691

Author version available

A novel chiral phase of achiral hard triangles and an entropy-driven demixing of enantiomers

A. P. Gantapara, W. Qi and M. Dijkstra, Soft Matter, 2015, 11, 8684 DOI: 10.1039/C5SM01762A

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