Investigation for correlation between elastic constant and thermal stability of liquid crystalline blue phase I

We investigated the relationship between the elastic constants of host nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) and the thermal stability of their liquid crystalline blue phase I (BPI). By adding bent-core molecules to a conventional NLC, we could gradually increase (decrease) the elastic constant K-11 (K-33). We confirmed experimentally that the thermal stability of BPI strongly depends on the ratio of the elastic constants K-11 and K-33 of the host NLCs; the stability increases with decreasing K-33/K-11 particularly when it is less than unity, being consistent with the theoretical prediction.