Liquid-crystalline heterodimesogens and ABA-heterotrimesogens comprising a bent 3,5-diphenyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole central unit

• Govindaswamy Shanker,
• Marko Prehm and
• Carsten Tschierske

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2012, 8, 472–485, doi:10.3762/bjoc.8.54

• studied by optical polarizing microscopy (PM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). All dimesogens exhibit broad ranges of cybotactic nematic phases (NcybA and NcybC), in some cases accompanied by additional mesophases (CybA or SmC) at lower temperature. The combination of

• the 3,5-diphenyl-1,2,4-oxadiazole unit with one cyanobiphenyl core leads to the removal of tilted smectic and cybotactic nematic phases (SmC, NcybC), which are replaced by the nontilted CybA phases and nematic phases composed of SmA-type clusters (NcybA). The orthogonal cybotactic nematic phases of

• bent-core mesogens are of special interest for achieving biaxial nematic phases of the orthorhombic type. The orthogonal (NcybA) and skewed (NcybC) cybotactic nematic phases were distinguished by XRD and optical observations. Keywords: bent-core mesogens; cybotactic nematic phases; dimesogen; liquid