One of the more recent additions to the wealth of thermotropic liquid crystals are the various phases of bent-core molecules. In particular the Dark Conglomerate phase is still quite intriguing, as it displays the relatively uncommon phenomena of spontaneous de-racemization, the formation of two types of chiral domains in the absence of overall chirality of the constituent molecules or the macroscopic phase. This domain formation was investigated in detail with respect to cooling rate and applied electric fields. It was found that any effects of domain coarsening or aging are practically absent and that only the cooling rate influences the domain sizes and thus their number density. The presence of an electric field during the domain formation results in a modification from shape-anisotropic domains with an aspect ratio of length to width of approximately L/W ≈ 3 at zero field, to shape isotropic domains with an aspect ratio of about L/W ≈ 1 at non-zero field. The overall chirality of the investigated materials remains unaltered in all cases.

大量的热致液晶的最新添加物之一是弯曲核分子的各个相。尤其是，深色团聚体相仍然很吸引人，因为它表现出相对不常见的自发消旋现象，即在没有组成分子的整体手性或宏观相的情况下形成两种类型的手性域。关于冷却速率和施加的电场，详细研究了该畴的形成。已经发现，实际上不存在畴粗化或时效的任何影响，并且仅冷却速率影响畴的尺寸并因此影响其数量密度。在畴形成过程中电场的存在导致形状各向异性畴在零场处的长宽比大约为L / W≈3的形状各向异性畴向长宽比约为L / W的形状各向同性畴的变化在非零场时W≈1。在所有情况下，被调查材料的整体手性保持不变。