Morphology and molecular organisation of liquid-crystalline perylene-3,4,9,10-tetra-(n-hexylester) deposited on a solid substrate

Abstract

Liquid-crystalline perylene-3,4,9,10-tetra-(n-hexylester) forms characteristic dendritic or flower-like structures at room temperature when it is deposited on a hydrophilic glass substrate using the zone-casting technique. It was found that such unique structures were not possible to be created simply by recrystallisation of this dye from a liquid-crystalline columnar phase. On the basis of the observations using a confocal microscope and the study of wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) as well as the analysis of the absorption and fluorescence spectra, some conclusions, concerning the molecular organisation in the dendritic structure, are drawn. Based on the research, one can assume that the dendrites are formed by columnar molecular aggregates with the column axes parallel to the substrate. Such an organisation of the molecules can be interesting from the point of view of organic electronics.

Keywords:

• perylene-tetraester
• molecular aggregation
• columnar phase
• WAXS
• optical absorption
• fluorescence
• zone-casting

Additional information

Funding

This work has been financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland under PUT Project DS-PB 64-414/2014.