Extraordinary magnetic field effect in bent-core liquid crystals.

A bent-core mesogen that forms a cybotactic nematic phase exhibits a giant magnetic field-induced shift of its nematic-isotropic and smectic-C-nematic transition temperatures: ΔT(H) = 4 K for H = 10 kOe. In contrast with molecular nematics, in cybotactic nematics the field couples with the anisotropic susceptibility of clusters containing several hundred partially ordered molecules. X-ray diffraction data corroborate a quantitative estimate of inferred cluster size (∼300 molecules). The results represent an unequivocal demonstration of the cluster picture of the nematic phase of this class of nonlinear liquid crystals.