Chirality detection with FLCs - a comment

An interesting result, with some bearing upon recently discovered unichiral LCs obtained from putatively achiral or racemic molecules, is described. Specifically, the high P ferroelectric liquid crystal W314, when prepared from racemic 2-butanol purchased from Aldrich, gave unichiral FLC samples with negative P. This was shown to be due to a slight enantiomeric excess in the Aldrich racemate; authentically racemic W314 was obtained from freshly-prepared racemic 2-butanol. These results suggest that ferroelectric electrooptic behavior is an extremely sensitive detector of net chirality in near-racemates.