2589-79-9Relevant academic research and scientific papers
Controlling the formation of heliconical smectic phases by molecular design of achiral bent-core molecules
Alaasar, Mohamed,Cai, Xiaoqian,Eremin, Alexey,Kurachkina, Marharyta,Lehmann, Anne,Liu, Feng,Nagaraj, Mamatha,Poppe, Marco,Poppe, Silvio,Tamba, Maria-Gabriela,Tschierske, Carsten,Vij, Jagdish K.
supporting information, p. 3316 - 3336 (2020/03/23)
Fluids with spontaneous helical structures formed by achiral low molecular mass molecules is a newly emerging field with great application potential. Here, we explore the chemical mechanisms of the helix formation by systematically modifying the structure of a bent 4-cyanoresorcinol unit functionalized with two different phenyl benzoate based aromatic rods and terminated with two alkyl chains of variable length. The majority of these achiral compounds self-assemble, forming a short-pitch heliconical liquid crystalline phase in broad temperature ranges. In some cases, it occurs without any competing low-temperature phase. We demonstrate that the mirror symmetry broken mesophase occurs at the paraelectric-(anti)ferroelectric transition if the tilt angle of the molecules in the smectic layers is around 18-20° and if this transition coincides with a change of the tilt correlation between the layers. In the close vicinity of this transition, a field-induced heliconical phase develops as well as a new heliconical phase with polarization-randomized structure. These investigations provide a blueprint for the future design of achiral molecules capable of spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking by the formation of heliconical liquid crystalline phases.
Synthesis of 4 - n-alkyl substituted phenol method
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Paragraph 0025-0028, (2018/04/01)
The invention discloses a synthesis method of 4-n-alkyl substituted phenol. Under the catalysis of zinc chloride, aniline and n-alkyl alcohol with the carbon number being 4-30 react in methylbenzene or xylene to obtain the 4-n-alkyl substituted aniline, and then the 4-n-alkyl substituted aniline reacts with sodium nitrite and acid to obtain the 4-n-alkyl substituted phenol. The synthesis method is easy to implement, an intermediate directly enters the next reaction without being separated or purified, and therefore the reaction efficiency is improved. The final product is high in purity and is good in depth of parallelism when reappearing, and technological conditions are suitable for mass production.
Phase behavior and molecular packing of octadecyl phenols and their methyl ethers at the air/water interface
Peikert, Miroslawa,Chen, Xiadong,Chi, Lifeng,Brezesinski, Gerald,Janich, Simon,Wuerthwein, Ernst-Ulrich,Schaefer, Hans J.
, p. 5780 - 5789 (2014/06/10)
Noncovalent molecular interactions, such as hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces, play an important role in self-assembling to supramolecular structures. To study these forces, we chose monolayers at the air/water interface to limit the possible arrangements of the interacting molecules. Furthermore, monolayers provide useful tools to understand and study interactions between molecules in a controlled and fundamental way. The phase behavior and molecular packing of the phenols 1-(4-hydroxyphenyl)-octadecane (5a), 1-(3,4-dihydroxyphenyl)-octadecane (6), and 1-(2,3,4-trihydroxyphenyl)- octadecane (3) and their methyl ethers in monolayers at the air/water interface have been examined by π/A isotherms, Brewster angle microscopy (BAM), grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) measurements, and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The phenols are synthesized by Friedel-Crafts acylation of methoxybenzenes, hydrogenation of the resulting aryl ketones, and cleavage of the aryl methyl ethers. In the π/A isotherms and in BAM, the phenols show patches of the solid condensed phase at large molecular areas and the monolayers collapse at high pressures. Furthermore, the dimensions of the unit cell obtained by GIXD measurements are compatible with an arrangement of the phenyl rings that allows one aryl ring to interact with four adjacent phenyl rings in an edge-to-face arrangement, which leads to a significant binding energy. The experimental data are in good agreement with DFT calculations of 2D crystalline benzene and p-cresol arrangements. The enhanced monolayer stability of phenol 5a can be explained by hydrogen bonds of the hydroxyl group with water and van der Waals forces between the alkyl chains and aryl-aryl interactions.
Tilt Angle Variation as a Function of Chain Length and Temperature in the Smectic C Phases of p,Alkoxyphenyl-p,Alkoxybenzoates
Heinrich, B.,Guillon, D.
, p. 21 - 44 (2007/10/02)
The variation of the tilt angle with temperature in the smectic C phase has generally been shown to be non-existent or very slow for compounds or mixtures with the nematic-smectic C transition, while in the case of systems with the smectic A-smectic C transition, a relation between the steepness of this variation, near the transition, and the width of the smectic A domain has been observed.In this work, the variation of tilt angle in the smectic C phase is described for p-alkoxyphenyl-p-alkoxybenzoate homologous series, for which the evolution of polymorphism can be controlled systematically, by varying stepwise the length of the aliphatic chains, and for which large domains can be obtained for each type of phase sequence, nematic-, smectic A- and isotropic-smectic C.After completing the discussion made previously on the incidence of chain length on polymorphism, we confirm that the variation of tilt angle with temperature is slowest for compounds with intermediate chain lengths corresponding to the largest smectic A temperature range; this variation becomes continuously steeper when the smectic A domain becomes narrow.In addition, we show that the same description can be extended to the other types of phase sequences, by using the hypothesis of a virtual smectic A-smectic C transition above the observed nematic- or isotropic-smectic C transition.In fact, short chain lengths for homologues with a nematic/smectic C transition, or long chain lengths for homologues with an isotropic/smectic C transition, lead to an increase of the tilt angle at the phase transition and to a decrease of the amplitude of its variation with temperature; in our description, this behaviour corresponds to an increase of the temperature range between the real and virtual transitions.As a consequence, the homologues with very short and very long chain lengths show a quasi temperature-independent tilt angle, while the other homologues present a tilt angle variation similar to that observed for compounds exhibiting a smectic C/smectic A transition.This feature indicates that there is no need to distinguish between different types of smectic C phase.
