Hydrocarbon columnar phases

The other type of porous glass that has cylindrical pores is mesoporous silicate (MPS) (14,15). The advantage of MPS is in its feasibility to make a small pore diameter, typically below 10 nm. A columnar-phase liquid crystal, formed from surfactant molecules with a long alkyl chain tail and silicate molecules, is calcined to remove hydrocarbons. At the end, a hexagonal array of straight and uniform cylindrical holes is created in a crystalline order. MPS is not available commercially either. 

For polycatenar hydrogen bonded complexes with fluorinated chains at both ends (e.g., 138,139, see Fig. 36) formation of columnar phases was observed [246]. However, compound 137, having a branched Rp-chain at one end and three RH-chains at the other has a sequence of three distinct phases in the unusual sequence Cub-Col-SmA-Iso. For the SmA phase of compound 137 a structure with intercalated aromatic cores and RF-chains and separated layers of the hydrocarbon chains was proposed. At lower temperature, when incompatibility rises and the aromatics and Rp-chains disintegrate, all three components form their own layers. However, this produces interface curvature and a columnar phase with square lattice is formed. On further cooling a transition to a cubic phase with Im3m lattice takes place which is most likely of the bicontinuous type [262]. This leads to the unusual phase sequence Cubv-Col-SmA where the positions of the Cubv and Col phases are exchanged with respect to the usually observed phase sequences. The Col-Cub transition at lower temperature could be the result of the decreased conformational disorder of the terminal chains which reduces the steric frustration and hence reduces the interface curvature. 

Lyotropic nematic phases (see Section A) can also be produced by preparing, for instance, binary or ternary mixtures of organic disc-like compounds in suitable solvents such as hydrocarbons [20]. In linear saturated [20,21] or, as found recently [21], even better in cyclic saturated hydrocarbons, preferably cyclohexane [21], almie or in such a solvent plus an achiral or a chiral electron acceptor compound, induction of lyotropic Ncd or N coi phases, respectively, can occur. Sometimes, an Ncd phase can be formed in addition to a columnar phase [21]. Furthermore, it has also been observed that even two different No>i phases can be induced in diat way in the same system [22,23] showing a nematic-nematic phase transition [22-24] due to a diffa ence in the construction of their columns. In one of these Ncoi phases the constituent discs of the columns spontaneously formed are tilted with respect to the column axis, but in the second, parallel Ncoi phase they are untilted [22,23]. However, reliable data about the length of the columns in Ncoi phases do not yet seem to exist... 

A unique temperature dependent phase sequence hexagonal columnar - reentrant isotropic (Isore) - smectic A was observed by Szydlowska et al. for some c/,v-enaininoketone Ni(II) and Cu(II) complexes combining two fluorinated and two hydrocarbon chains (compound 171). Related complexes with only one RF-chain... 

Cyclic hydrocarbons with six equivalent substituent chains emanating from several carbon atoms about the ring can again adopt conformations in which the molecular shape is disk-like, but the aspect ratio is much larger. If the chains are somewhat flexible and the molecules possess an appropriate balance between order and disorder and attractive and repulsive intermolecular forces, the creation of new mesophase types can be envisioned - and several have been found [102,104]. The two general classes of aggregation in liquid crystalline phases of discotic molecules are lenticular nematic (N ) and columnar discotic (D) [100-104]. Carbonaceous pitch mesophases, discussed in section 1.4.5, resemble phases. Only those discotic mesophases with benzene, cyclohexane and shape-related cores having primarily alkyl chains as substituents will be discussed here. 

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