Abstract
We designed and synthesized new liquid crystalline compounds, 1,7,8-trifluoronaphthalene and 7,8-difluorochroman derivatives. For their preparation, we developed some important technologies such as a ring formation, a selective reduction, a selective fluorination and an aromatization. These compounds exhibited large absolute value of dielectric anisotropy. The 1,7,8-trifluoronaphthalene derivatives exhibited large birefringence, on the other hand, the 7,8-difluorochroman derivatives exhibited low birefringence. All of them are very useful for vertical alignment mode liquid crystal display (VA-LCD).