Article in Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2025)

In typical systems, lowering the temperature leads to the formation of phases with increasing degree of order. In certain cases, however, competition between different types of intermolecular interactions can give rise to unusual phase sequences, in which a less ordered, higher-entropy phase remains stable at temperatures below a more ordered phase.
A research team from the Faculty of Chemistry at the University of Warsaw (G. J. Strachan, D. Pociecha, J. Szydłowska, E. Gorecka), in collaboration with scientists from the Universities of Aberdeen and Maribor, demonstrated that in liquid crystals, the emergence of ferroelectric order of molecular dipoles can actually melt molecular layers. This process results in a phase transition from a one-dimensional crystal to a liquid, upon cooling. In several newly synthesized liquid-crystalline compounds, they observed a phase sequence featuring a so-called reentrant phase—reported here for the first time in ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals.
The results have been published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition: G. J. Strachan, S. J. Ramsay, M. Juodka, D. Pociecha, J. Szydlowska, J. M.D. Storey, N. Vaupotič, R. Walker, E. Gorecka, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2025, e202516302. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202516302