Journal
CHEMISTRY-A EUROPEAN JOURNAL
Volume 21, Issue 22, Pages 8158-8167Publisher
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201500423
Keywords
liquid crystals; self-assembly; structure-property relationships; twist-bend nematic phase
Categories
Funding
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) [EP/J007714/1, EP/K039660/1]
- University of York
- EPSRC [EP/K039660/1, EP/J007714/1, EP/M020584/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/J007714/1, EP/K039660/1, EP/M020584/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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The nematic twist-bend phase (N-TB) was, until recently, only observed for polar mesogenic dimers, trimers or bent-core compounds. In this article, we report a comprehensive study on novel apolar materials that also exhibit N-TB phases. The N-TB phase was observed for materials containing phenyl, cyclohexyl or bicyclooctyl rings in their rigid-core units. However, for materials with long (>C7) terminal chains or mesogenic core units comprising three ring units, the N-TB phase was not observed and instead the materials exhibited smectic phases. One compound was found to exhibit a transition from the N-TB phase to an anticlinic smectic C phase; this is the first example of this polymorphism. Incorporation of lateral substitution with respect to the central core unit led to reductions in transition temperatures; however, the N-TB phase was still found to occur. Conversely, utilising branched terminal groups rendered the materials non-mesogenic. Overall, it appears that it is the gross molecular topology that drives the incidence of the N-TB phase rather than simple dipolar considerations. Furthermore, dimers lacking any polar groups, which were prepared to test this hypothesis, were found to be non mesogenic, indicating that at the extremes of polarity these effects can dominate over topology.
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