Remarkable effect of pre-organization on the self assembly in chiral liquid crystals.
In this article, liquid crystal phases possessing a helical molecular assembly, including frustrated three dimensional (3D) structures, are overviewed. Then, the chirality-originated superstructures in liquid crystals studied by the author are reviewed. The importance of the concept of "pre-organization" is highlighted, thus, molecular design producing a strong chiral effect has been proposed. Dichiral twin materials have been prepared systematically based on this concept, and correlation between molecular architectures and resulting frustrated liquid crustal phases, such as smectic blue, cubic, tetragonal smectic Q, and sponge phases, has been investigated. An electrically induced anisotropic birefringent structure in the chiral isotropic phase and a photoinduced 3D-3D phase transition in the smectic Q phase are introduced as possible application on the basis of the frustrated chiral 3D structured liquid crystal phases. A new type of chiral effect inducing the structural anisotropy in the 3D cubic structure of soft material is also described.
Nishiyama
Isa
I
DIC Corporation, Liquid Crystal Materials Technical Dept., 4472-1 Oaza Komuro, Ina-machi, Saitama 362-8577, Japan. isa-nishiyama@ma.dic.co.jp