Li, Y.-X., Gao, H.-F., Zhang, R.-B. et al. (6 more authors) (2022) A case of antiferrochirality in a liquid crystal phase of counter-rotating staircases. Nature Communications, 13 (1). 384.
Abstract
Helical structures continue to inspire, prompted by examples such as DNA double-helix and alpha-helix in proteins. Most synthetic polymers also crystallize as helices, which relieves steric clashes by twisting, while keeping the molecules straight for their ordered packing. In columnar liquid crystals, which often display useful optoelectronic properties, overall helical chirality can be induced by inclusion of chiral chemical groups or dopants; these bias molecular twist to either left or right, analogous to a magnetic field aligning the spins in a paramagnet. In this work, however, we show that liquid-crystalline columns with long-range helical order can form by spontaneous self-assembly of straight- or bent-rod molecules without inclusion of any chiral moiety. A complex lattice with Fddd symmetry and 8 columns per unit cell (4 right-, 4 left-handed) characterizes this “antiferrochiral” structure. In selected compounds it allows close packing of their fluorescent groups reducing their bandgap and giving them promising light-emitting properties.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Sheffield) The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/P002250/1; EP/T003294/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 22 Feb 2022 15:10 |
Last Modified: | 22 Feb 2022 15:10 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-022-28024-1 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:183922 |