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Role of impurities in the Lehmann effect of cholesteric liquid crystals: Towards an alternative model

The Lehmann effect is the rotation of cholesteric droplets when they are submitted to a temperature gradient. So far, this effect was only observed in the coexistence region between the cholesteric phase and its isotropic liquid. This zone of coexistence is due to the presence in the LC of impurities. In this paper, we show that the rotation velocity of the droplets does not depend on the choice of the impurity and on its concentration, providing that the variations of the equilibrium twist and the rotational viscosity are taken into account. These results were obtained by doping the cholesteric LC (a diluted mixture of 7CB and R811) with nonmesogenic and mesogenic impurities. The nonmesogenic impurities used are the biphenyl, the hexachloroethane, and a fluorinated polyether polymer. The mesogenic impurity is the LC I52. From these experiments we conclude that the Lehmann effect is certainly not due to a chemical torque of the type described by Leslie, Akopyan, and Zel’dovich. Finally, we propose alternative avenues that might be explored to understand the Lehmann effect.