Chiral amplification in a cyanobiphenyl nematic liquid crystal doped with helicene-like derivatives

• Alberta Ferrarini,
• Silvia Pieraccini,
• Stefano Masiero and
• Gian Piero Spada

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2009, 5, No. 50, doi:10.3762/bjoc.5.50

• ; helicene; nematic liquid crystal; Surface Chirality model; Introduction Nematic liquid crystals (LCs) are fluid phases formed by anisometric molecules which, though free to rotate as in ordinary liquids, are preferentially aligned along a common axis, called director. The addition of a chiral non-racemic

• Chirality model to shed light on the structural features responsible for the analogies and differences exhibited by these derivatives. The investigation of these dopants with well-defined geometry, by virtue of the low conformational freedom, and the substituents variously distributed around the core

• efficient chiral inducers in biaryl nematic mesophases. In this paper, we focus on a new series of helicene-like molecules of known absolute configuration. We have integrated cholesteric pitch measurements with geometry optimization by DFT calculations and analysis of the twisting ability by the Surface