Issue 4, 2017, Issue in Progress

Enhancement of the helical twisting power with increasing the terminal chain length of nonchiral bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal

Abstract

In this work, we prepared a series of nonchiral bent-core molecules with different terminal alkoxy chain lengths, and measured the helical twisting power (HTP) of the bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal (N*LC). We investigated the doping effect through the colour change and spectral change due to the Bragg (selective) reflection and found that the bent-core molecules with longer alkoxy chains showed stronger HTP under chiral circumstances such as N*LC. Namely, not only the axial conformations at wings linked to the bent central unit but also the length of the alkoxy chains at the terminal positions of the bent-core molecules play an important role in the resulting unusual chiral behaviour. A preliminary stochastic dynamics simulation to determine the distribution of the chirality order parameters was made, being consistent with the present experimental result.

Graphical abstract: Enhancement of the helical twisting power with increasing the terminal chain length of nonchiral bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
22 Nov 2016
Accepted
21 Dec 2016
First published
12 Jan 2017
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2017,7, 1932-1935

Enhancement of the helical twisting power with increasing the terminal chain length of nonchiral bent-core molecules doped in a chiral nematic liquid crystal

S. Jo, B. Kim, S. Jeon, J. Bae, M. Walker, M. Wilson, S. Choi and H. Takezoe, RSC Adv., 2017, 7, 1932 DOI: 10.1039/C6RA27158H

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