Author:

Keywords:

metallomesogens, liquid crystals

Abstract:

Lanthanide ions can be used to design liquid crystals with interesting spectroscopic and magnetic properties. For instance, luminescent or paramagnetic liquid crystals can be obtained. The physical properties can be tuned by a proper choice of the lanthanide ion. The ligand design allows to create either rodlike of disklike liquid crystals. Types of liquid-crystalline lanthanide complexes that have been investigated in our laboratories include Schiff’s bases, beta-diketonates, phthalocyanines and phenanthroline derivatives. Different types of mesophases have been observed: nematic, smectic A, hexagonal columnar and rectangular columnar phases. This presentation will give an overview of our recent work on liquid-crystalline lanthanide complexes. It will be shown that decoupling of the mesogenic groups and the coordinating groups is a new approach to obtain high coordination number metallomesogens. The first examples of nematogenic lanthanide complexes and of room temperature liquid-crystalline lanthanide complexes will be presented.