Freely Suspended Strands of Tilted Columnar Liquid-Crystal Phases: One-Dimensional Nematics with Orientational Jumps

Abstract
Observations of stable, freely suspended liquid-crystal strands are reported. Liquid crystals of triphenylene hexa-n-dodecanoate can be stretched into strands of diameter ≳1 μm, with the disk-shaped molecules arranged into columns along the strand axis. In the D1 phase (T<110° C) the molecules are tilted with respect to the strand axis, the tilt orientation behaving as a one-dimensional nematiclike field, interrupted by jumps in orientation between degenerate stable positions relative to the column lattice.