Chiral liquid crystal dopants derived from optically active drugs

Abstract

In this article we examine the possibility of using chiral pharmaceuticals as reactive substrates in the synthesis of chiral liquid crystals because chiral drugs usually have reproducibly high chemical and optical purities which are important for applications of chiral liquid crystals. Thus we combined racemic and S-ibuprofen, racemic and S-ketoprofen and S-naproxen with a fluoroterphenyl promesogenic material in order to create bent core materials which we predicted would have helical twisting powers depending on the extent of the molecular bending.

Keywords:

• pharmaceuticals
• helical twisting power
• chiral nematic materials

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. A. Tajbakhsh and Dr. A. Matharu for providing us with the intermediate 4′′-pentyl-3′-fluoro-4-hydroxyterphenyl.