Discotic assemblies

Yamada, M., Shen, Z. and Miyake, M. (2006) Self-assembly of discotic liquid crystalline molecule-modified gold nanopartides control of ID and hexagonal ordering induced by solvent polarity. Chemical Communications, (24), 2569-2571. 

Chiral Lyotropic Discotic Liquid Crystals and Self-Assembly of Chiral Discotics in Dilute Solution... 

It was quickly recognized that chirality would play an important role in discotic liquid crystals, not only for the possibility of creating cholesteric and ferroelectric liquid crystals but also as a tool for studying the self-assembly of these molecules as a whole, both in solution and in the solid state. However, initial studies revealed that expression of chirality in discotic liquid crystals was not as straightforward as for liquid crystals derived from calamitic molecules. More recently, with the increase in interest in self-assembly and molecular recognition, considerably more attention has been directed to the study of chiral discotics and their assemblies in solution. The objective of this chapter is... 

To understand how chirality is expressed, it is important to first describe the different thermotropic mesophase assemblies which can be formed by chiral discotics. Even though expression of chirality has been observed in thermotropic mesophases, the chiral expression occurs in a rather uncontrolled manner, and systems which are suitable for applications, for example, easily switchable columns/ferroelectric discotic liquid crystals, consequently have not yet been developed. Hence, the assembly of discotics in solution has received considerable attention. Supramolecular assemblies of discotic molecules in solution are still in their infancy and have not yet found commercial application, but they are of fundamental importance since they allow a detailed and focused investigation of the specific interactions that are required to express chirality at higher levels of organization. As such, the fundamental knowledge acquired from supramolecular assemblies in solution might formulate the design criteria for thermotropic chiral discotic mesophases and provide the necessary tools for the creation of functional systems. 

Nuckolls and Katz have synthesized discotic liquid crystalline molecules in which the core is a helix in its own right.37 Nonracemic helicene 33 was found to assemble into a columnar mesophase in which the helicenes stack on top of each other. CD spectroscopy showed a strong increase of the Cotton effect upon going from the molecularly dissolved state to the aggregated state, exhibiting an amplification of chirality. These helical columns give rise to a strong expression of chirality because the intrinsic shape of the helicenes... 

CHIRAL LYOTROPIC DISCOTIC LIQUID CRYSTALS AND SELF-ASSEMBLY OF CHIRAL DISCOTICS IN DILUTE SOLUTION... 

In this section we will address the issue of chirality in self-assembled discotic molecules in dilute solution. We will show how and why chirality is expressed at the mesoscopic level of the self-assembly and make clear that unique information concerning expression of chirality can be gathered from assemblies of discotics in solution. 

With respect to the self-assembly of chiral discotics into columns, two different cases can be distinguished, differing in the order that is present in the... 

Figure 6.6 Self-assembly of discotics. Different stages of aggregation are given as function of concentration.

A second example of homochiral columns formed by discotics are the complexes of tetrazoles (59 and 60) with l,3,5-tris(4,5-dihydroimidazol-2-yl)benzene (61).74 Four molecules self-assemble to give a supramolecular disc and these discs subsequently form columns in nonpolar solvents. Chiral discs were obtained from the self-assembly of the chiral tetrazole (60) with 61. The chirality of the side chains was found to induce a bias in the helic-ity of the supramolecular assembly. Sergeants-and-soldiers measurements75 were performed for which chiral (60) and achiral (59) molecules were mixed. The experiments showed no amplification of chirality, thus revealing that in these systems chirality transfer from the side chains into the column is... 

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