2005/10/26 by Edward Barry, Zach Hensel, Michael Shribak +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.96.018305
5 pages, 5 figures. submitted to Physical Review Letters. to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett
arxiv created 2005/10/26 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01
We study the liquid crystalline phase behavior of a concentrated suspension of helical flagella isolated from \it Salmonella typhimurium. Flagella are prepared with different polymorphic states, some of which have a pronounced helical character while others assume a rod-like shape. We show that the static phase behavior and dynamics of chiral helices are very different when compared to simpler achiral hard rods. With increasing concentration, helical flagella undergo an entropy driven first order phase transition to a liquid crystalline state having a novel chiral symmetry.