Spontaneous Mirror-Symmetry Breaking in Different non-Chiral Liquid Crystalline Systems

Spontaneous Mirror-Symmetry and appearance of chiral self-assembled superstructures in non-chiral systems represents a fascinating field of contemporary research with potential applications. For long time the formation of helical superstructure was associated with enantiomeric chiral molecules. Later on Pasteur showed that that the racemic mixtures of chiral molecules can resolve spontaneously into two chiral forms. Such deracemization or symmetry breaking in racemic mixtures was observed during crystallization. In recent years interest in mirror-symmetry breaking extended to soft matter systems