Stacking of conical molecules with a fullerene apex into polar columns in crystals and liquid crystals

被引:346
作者
Sawamura, M
Kawai, K
Matsuo, Y
Kanie, K
Kato, T
Nakamura, E [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Tokyo, Dept Chem, Bunkyo Ku, Tokyo 1130033, Japan
[2] Univ Tokyo, Sch Engn, Dept Chem & Biotechnol, Bunkyo Ku, Tokyo 1138656, Japan
关键词
D O I
10.1038/nature01110
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Polar liquid crystalline materials can be used in optical and electronic applications, and recent interest has turned to formation strategies that exploit the shape of polar molecules and their interactions to direct molecular alignment(1,2). For example, banana-shaped molecules align their molecular bent within smectic layers(3), whereas conical molecules should form polar columnar assemblies(4-9). However, the flatness of the conical molecules used until now(4-6,9) and their ability to flip(7,8) have limited the success of this approach to making polar liquid crystalline materials. Here we show that the attachment of five aromatic groups to one pentagon of a C-60 fullerene molecule yields deeply conical molecules that stack into polar columnar assemblies. The stacking is driven by attractive interactions between the spherical fullerene moiety and the hollow cone formed by the five aromatic side groups of a neighbouring molecule in the same column. This packing pattern is maintained when we extend the aromatic groups by attaching flexible aliphatic chains, which yields compounds with thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystalline properties. In contrast, the previously reported fullerene-containing liquid crystals(10-17) all exhibit thermotropic properties only, and none of them contains the fullerene moiety as a functional part of its mesogen units. Our design strategy should be applicable to other molecules and yield a range of new polar liquid crystalline materials.
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收藏
页码:702 / 705
页数:4
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