Summarizing, the studies show that the achiral and chiral
forms of NTB are thermodynamically identical phases, like the
N and N* phases. Contrary to N* phase, the structure of NTB*
is optically positive, thus the conical angle of the heliconical
structure is less than the magical angle. The high compression
moduli, which are in the same range as for smectic phases,
indicate a structure with a periodicity in a nanometer range.
For chiral materials the periodicity observed by AFM is about
50 nm and corresponds to 10–15 molecular lengths, which is
considerably longer than that in achiral compound CB7CB
(three molecular lengths).