Unsymmetrical cholesterol and benzoxazole-based liquid crystalline dimers: synthesis and characterisation

Abstract

The synthesis of a number of novel liquid crystalline materials has been achieved by connecting the 2-phenyl substituted benzoxazole unit to a cholesterol unit having an alkyl spacer through an imine linkage. All the synthesised compounds exhibited liquid crystalline property. Compounds 10b and 10d possess both the blue phase and the smectic C* phase.

Keywords:

• Benzoxazole
• cholesterol
• schiff's base
• blue phase
• SmC* phase
• SmA phase

Acknowledgements

We thank DST (New Delhi) and CSIR (New Delhi) for financial assistance. T.G. is grateful to the CSIR (New Delhi) for his research fellowship. We also thank DST (New Delhi) for providing Bruker NMR (400 MHz), Perkin-Elmer CHN Analyser, FTIR and UV–vis spectrometer.

Notes

^† Present address: Department of Chemistry, Tezpur University, Napaam, Assam, India.