5,5-BBCO

5,5-BBCO is the short name for the chemical compound 4,4'-di-n-pentyl[2.2.2]octane. The work in Ref. 1 was one of the first to show the spontaneous growth of a nematic phase from an isotropic liquid. This growth took place over a period of 6-10 ns resulting in a final order parameter of around 0.8. The flexible tails distinctively showed the odd-even effect.

References

1. Carl Mcbride, Mark R. Wilson and Judith A. K. Howard "Molecular dynamics simulations of liquid crystal phases using atomistic potentials", Molecular Physics 93 pp. 955 - 964 (1998)