  Ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals represent not only interesting
fundamental science, but they also hold promise for storage capacitors with
high power density or new information display technology having sub-millisecond
switching. In this work we describe the synthesis and measurements of the
physical properties of a new highly polar ferroelectric nematic compound,
4-nitrophenyl 4-[(2,4-dimethoxylbenzoyl)oxy]-2-fluorobenzoate (RT11001). The
dipole moment of this material (along the long molecular axis) is calculated to
exceed 11.5 Debye. We employ a wide range of physical characterization methods
including differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), mass density measurement,
optical birefringence, polarizing optical microscopy (POM), electric current
analysis, and electro-optical switching, to show that RT11001 has three
distinct ferroelectric states, F1, F2 and F3. F1 is purely orientationally
ordered ferroelectric nematic phase (NF), F2 has a ferroelectric nematic with
possibly short-range hexagonal order normal to the director (NhF), and we
conjecture that F3 has a long-range hexagonal order normal to the director
(ColhF).
