Visualizing the helical stacking of octahedral metallomesogens with a chiral core.

A combination of grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction and molecular dynamics simulation studies led to the visualization of the stacking structure of a helical columnar liquid crystal formed by enantiopure octahedral metallomesogens with ΔΛ chirality. The helical structure was elucidated as a hybrid of two major proposed structures.