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An Electrochemical Cholesteric Liquid Crystalline Device for Quick and Low-Voltage Color Modulation
Published on: February 27, 2019
Achiral flexible liquid crystal trimers exhibiting chiral conglomerates
Haruna Sasaki1, Yoichi Takanishi, Jun Yamamoto
1Department of Frontier Materials Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Hirosaki University, 3 Bunkyo-cho, Hirosaki, 036-8561, Japan. ayoshiza@hirosaki-u.ac.jp.
Abstract:
Chiral conglomerates of domains with opposite handedness have attracted much attention from researchers. We prepared a homologous series of achiral liquid crystal trimers in which two phenylpyrimidine units and one biphenyl unit were connected via flexible methylene spacers. We investigated their phase transition behaviour. Some trimers possessing odd-numbered spacers were found to exhibit a nematic phase and a dark chiral conglomerate phase possessing a layered structure. The chiral characteristics were confirmed by uncrossing the polarizers in opposite directions. The layer spacing detected using X-ray diffraction was about 80% of the molecular length. The structure-property relations indicate that intermolecular interactions cause a conformational change in the trimers possessing flexible odd-numbered methylene spacers to form helical conformers with axial chirality, which might induce chiral segregation and layer deformation to drive the chiral conglomerates.
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