Simple and highly efficient chiral dopant molecules possessing both rod- and arch-like units

Effects of shape and solute-solvent compatibility on the efficacy of chirality transfer: Nanoshapes in nematics

Chirality, as a concept, is well understood at most length scales. However, quantitative models predicting the efficacy of the transmission of chirality across length scales are lacking. We propose here a modus operandi for a chiral nanoshape solute in an achiral nematic liquid crystal host showing that that chirality transfer may be understood by unusually simple geometric considerations. This mechanism is based on the product of a pseudoscalar chirality indicator and of a geometric shape compatibility factor based on the two-dimensional isoperimetric quotients for each nanoshape solute. The model is tested on an experimental set of precisely engineered gold nanoshapes. These libraries of calculated and in-parallel acquired experimental data among related nanoshapes pave the way for predictive calculations of chirality transfer in nanoscale, macromolecular, and biological systems, from designing chiral discriminators and enantioselective catalysts to developing chiral metamaterials and understanding nature's innate ability to transfer homochirality across length scales.

Effects of terminal chain length in hydrogen-bonded chiral switches on phototunable behavior of chiral nematic liquid crystals: helicity inversion and phase transition

A novel series of photoresponsive chiral switches are fabricated by a facile hydrogen-bonded (H-bonded) assembly method, in which the binaphthyl azobenzene molecule is used as the proton acceptor, and binaphthyl acids with opposite chiral configuration are proton donors. We find that the helical twisted power of H-bonded chiral switches and the helical handedness of induced chiral nematic liquid crystals (N*-LCs) are mainly determined by the terminal flexible chain length in proton donors of binaphthyl acids. Controlling the lengths of the terminal flexible chain leads to different photoswitching behaviors by light irradiation, such as a helical inversion in the N*-LCs and a phase transition from N*-LCs to nematic LCs. This is mainly because of chiral counteraction and intensity attenuation of opposite chiral configurations between the proton acceptor and proton donor during UV-vis irradiation. Additionally, the thermal switching behavior of N*-LCs doped with H-bonded chiral switches is also demonstrated, and the related tuning mechanism may be attributed to the H-bonded effect and the changes in a dihedral angle of the binaphthyl rings. This facile assembly approach provides a new way for the fabrication of functional chiral switches for photonic applications.