Orientational ordering of liquid crystals containing a difluoro-substituted phenyl ring

Abstract

The orientational ordering of several liquid crystals containing a difluorosubstituted phenyl ring has been studied through the use of C-13 NMR. The fluorinated phenyl ring of these liquid crystals have C_s symmetry, so three order parameters are required to completely describe the ordering of this ring. All three of these order parameters have been calculated from carbon-fluorine dipolar coupling constants obtained from the carbon-fluorine splittings in the C-13 NMR spectra. Because of the complexity of the fluorine-coupled spectra, variable angle spinning (VAS) was used to resolve the carbon-fluorine splittings. In order to study the orientational ordering over wide ranges of temperature, we have developed an empirical correlation between the order parameter and the value of a carbon-fluorine dipolar coupling constant. This enabled us to study the change in the order parameter with temperature. The results of applying this method to several structurally similar liquid crystals containing the same type of difluorinated phenyl ring are presented. A comparison is made to a similar mono-fluorinated liquid crystal.