Chirality driven mesomorphic behaviour difference: dichiral compounds containing two lactate groups

ABSTRACT

Four compounds containing two lactate groups and one perfluorocarbon chain are designed and synthesised, whose chirality is tuned by changing the chirality of the lactic acid residues. (R,S)- and (S,R)-2 stereoiosomers exhibit an enantiotropic SmA phase, while (R,R)- and (S,S)-2 stereoisomers exhibit an enantiotropic SmA phase and an enantiotropic SmC_d* one. Therefore, the chirality of the compounds plays an important role in the mesomorphic behaviours of the compounds. The optical activity of these liquid crystals is dominated by the chirality of the lactate group near the core. (R)- and (S)-1 with one lactic acid residue and one perfluorocarbon chain exhibit only an enantiotropic SmA phase.

Graphical Abstract

KEYWORDS:

• Perfluoroalkyl
• liquid crystal
• dichiral
• lactic acid

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Political Science-preponderant Discipline of Jiangsu Province, the Project of Scientific and Technologic Infrastructure of Suzhou (SZS201905) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51473106 and 51673141).