Structural variants of<i>RM734</i>in the design of splay nematic materials

The recent discovery of the splay nematic phase, a new polymorph that has been found to be both polar and ferroelectric, is lead paragraph in an entirely chapter history liquid crystals. potential for transformative applications utilising this state matter – such as photonics, non-linear optics, memory so on can only met with significant improvements temperature range existing materials 4-(4-nitrophenoxycarbonyl)phenyl 4-methoxy-2-methoxybenzoate (RM734). Herein we present several families which are structurally related archetypal material, RM734, including first non-rod-like within context phase. We find incidence (or absence) variant designer material cannot easily rationalised terms molecular dipole moment or polarisability. However, mixture formulation shows promise engineering improved working ranges.