Abstract:

Currently there is great interest in the design and synthesis of new non-conventional liquid crystalline materials, to generate new mesophases and molecular organizations. The policatenar mesogens are very interesting, because they have an intermediate molecular architecture, situated between rod-like and discotic mesogens, and exhibit both calamitic and columnar liquid crystal phases [1]. Varying the chain length of polycatenar compounds can change the mesogenic behaviour from that of the calamitic rod-like materials to that of columnar materials [2] In this work, we report the synthesis, characterization and mesomorphic properties of novel polycatenar liquid crystal. In these cases, it was suggested that the driving force for the columnar phase is microphase segregation between the rigid-rod core and the flexible chains, and the π–π stacking between the π-conjugated aromatic rings. The synthetic route is shown in the scheme 1.