Abstract
Liquid crystals represent a unique class of self-organising systems, which although found in many day-today practical material applications, such as displays, are also intimately entwined with living processes. They have the potential, just like living systems, to provide us with a unique vehicle for the development of self-ordering nano-and mesoscopic-engineered materials with specific functional properties. In this article we describe a new concept for the design of self-assembling functional liquid crystals as segmented or "Janus" liquid-crystalline supermolecular materials in the form of structures that contain two different types of mesogenic units, which favour different types of mesophase structure, grafted onto the same star-shaped scaffold to create supermolecules that contain different hemispheres. The materials exhibit chiral nematic and chiral smectic C phases.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 4869-4877 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Chemistry - A European Journal |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 20 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Oct 2003 |
Keywords
- chirality
- dendrimers
- liquid crystals
- self-assembly
- supramolecular chemistry
- SHAPE-PERSISTENT
- DENDRITIC MACROMOLECULES
- BLOCK DENDRIMERS
- MICELLES
- DENDRONS
- FUNCTIONALIZATION
- POLYMERS
- CHAINS