Issue 13, 2018

Molecular shape as a means to control the incidence of the nanostructured twist bend phase

Abstract

Liquid crystalline phases with a spontaneous twist-bend modulation are most commonly observed for dimers and bimesogens with nonamethylene spacers. In order to redress this balance we devised a simple chemical intermediate that can be used to prepare unsymmetrical bimesogens; as a proof of concept we prepared and studied eleven novel materials with all found to exhibit the twist-bend phase and exhibit a linear relationship between TN-I and TTB-N. A computational study of the conformational landscape reveals the octamethyleneoxy spacer to have a broader distribution of bend-angles than the nonamethylene equivalent, leading to reductions in the thermal stability of the TB phase. This result indicates that a tight distribution of bend-angles should stabilise the TB phase and lead to direct TB-Iso phase transitions, and conversely a broader distribution should destabilise the TB phase which may allow new states of matter that are occluded by the incidence of this phase to be revealed.

Graphical abstract: Molecular shape as a means to control the incidence of the nanostructured twist bend phase

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
01 Dec 2017
Accepted
17 Jan 2018
First published
12 Mar 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Soft Matter, 2018,14, 2508-2514

Molecular shape as a means to control the incidence of the nanostructured twist bend phase

E. E. Pocock, R. J. Mandle and J. W. Goodby, Soft Matter, 2018, 14, 2508 DOI: 10.1039/C7SM02364B

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