Mechanistic investigation of chiral nematic liquid crystals by using systematic bromine group introduction to complex type dopant

Abstract

Nematic liquid crystals (N) are known to transform to chiral nematic liquid crystals (N*) on doping a small amount of chiral molecules, whereas the induction mechanism is still not fully understood. We investigate the effect of dipolar interactions between dopants and liquid crystals using ruthenium complex dopants with Δ, Λ chirality. We prepared four different dopants by changing the number and position of bromine atom introduced to the ligand. Depending on the position of the bromine atoms, N* with opposite helices were selectively formed on doping with MBBA and 5CB.