Amphiphilic hairy disks with branched hydrophilic tails and a hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene core

Amphiphilic discotic molecules with hydrophilic side branches consisting of hexaphenyl hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene and hexabiphenyl hexa-peri-hexabiphenylcoronene as the aromatic core and hexa-substituted oligoethers as the branched peripheral chains have been synthesized, and their microstructure has been characterized. The discotic molecules based on dibranched oligoether side chains have been observed to self-organize into a well-ordered hexagonal columnar structure within liquid crystalline phases, which possessed an exceptionally high thermal stability and an unusually wide temperature range over >300 degreesC. We suggest that a combination of the large lateral dimensions of the rigid cores and disordered structure of the oxygen-containing branches tails is a driving force to the formation of a highly ordered columnar structure in the bulk state with enhanced molecular segregation. In contrast to the thermotropic phase behavior that favors the formation of highly ordered columnar aggregates through a strong stacking interaction, the hexabenzocoronene cores are packed in a face-on arrangement at the air/water interface and on solid surfaces with surface domains composed of an array of 7 x 7 molecules. We suggest a crablike molecular conformation and cluster-segregated monolayers with 6-fold symmetry and unusual face-on packing on a solid surface. Preliminary spectroscopic studies in the bulk state have shown that the molecules based on a hexaaromatic-substituted core may serve as functional supramolecular materials with high energy transfer characteristic within the columns due to near-perfect columnar ordering, which is unchanged over a wide temperature range. We believe that an absence of the crystallization phenomenon of side-branched oligoether chains is critical for the formation of long-range columnar ordering with strong intracolumnar correlation of conjugated disks important for high carrier mobility.