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Featured Liquid Crystal Picture Art of the Month
September 2026© Anna Savchenko Where uniformity meets twist: the captivating nature of ferroelectric nematics.
The polarised macroscopic texture reveals the formation process of domain walls in a flat 5.0 µm cell with synpolar anchoring conditions (parallel rubbing on both substrates of the LC cell). Following the transition from the antiferroelectric Smectic Z phase to the ferroelectric nematic phase below the transition temperature, a uniform texture with conical defects is initially observed. As the temperature decreases, structural changes occur and twisted domain walls are formed.
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Author
| Anna Savchenko is a doctoral candidate at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frank Gießelmann. Her research is focused on phase transitions in a new generation of liquid-crystalline compounds that exhibit the ferroelectric nematic phase. She develops new experimental and characterisation methods and improves existing techniques to gain deeper insight into the emerging field of polar nematic liquid crystals.. email address: anna.savchenko@ipc.uni-stuttgart.de Website : https://www.ipc.uni-stuttgart.de/team/Savchenko-00001/ |
Jury Comment
The apparent simplicity of this hauntingly vivid image belies the complexity of the ferroelectric nematic phase that it captures.
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