Rod-shaped dopants for flexoelectric nematic mixtures

Abstract

We report the synthesis and liquid crystalline behaviour of two series of para-substituted terphenyls as dopants with a rigid rod-like shape, rather than a wedge-, pear- or banana-shape, for guest–host nematic mixtures with flexoelectric properties. One series of liquid crystalline dopants is of low-to-strongly negative dielectric anisotropy and the other is of low-to-strongly positive dielectric anisotropy. The usefulness of apolar and polar rod-like dopants as components of flexoelectric nematic mixtures of positive dielectric anisotropy for use in LCDs is investigated in general and the dependence of the flexoelectric properties of the doped nematic mixtures on the polarity of the dopants is studied in particular. The correlation between the concentration of the dopant and the magnitude of the flexoelastic ratio of several guest–host nematic mixtures is investigated.

Keywords:

• polyfluorinated dopants
• flexoelectric nematics
• terphenyls

Acknowledgments

We express our thanks to the Merck Chemicals Ltd for funding a PhD studentship (NA). We would also like to thank B. Worthington (¹H NMR) and K. Welham (MS) for spectroscopic measurements.