Oblique Columnar Assemblies of Polycatenar Molecules via Click Chemistry

Abstract

Polycatenar liquid crystals (LCs) are an interesting class of building blocks because their self-assembling behavior shares characteristics of calamitic and discotic LCs. 1 Depending on the number of peripheral chains connected to the central rigid rod, polycatenar LCs self-organize into lamellar (like calamitic LC)/ or columnar (like discotic LC) structures in the bulk states. In addition, 2-D packing morphologies (mostly hexagonal or rectangular) of their supramolecular columns were reported to be strongly dependent upon the shape of the column cross-section. Due to the diverse assembling behavior, this polycatenar system recently becomes more popular when devising functional soft materials.