The orientation of cyano biphenyl type liquid crystal molecules inside the MOF with regular alignment of molecules

Abstract

The alignment of liquid crystal is determined by the alignment of the molecules at the interface. In the present work, we focused on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with highly regular alignment of molecules and high porosity. We introduced 4-cyano-4’-pentylbiphenyl (5CB) into the pore of the MOF, resulting the alignment of 5CB inside the MOFs along the axis of the crystal. Furthermore, the direction of the 5CB rotated with increasing the temperature, and the orientation is kept over 130 °C extremely higher than nematic-to-isotropic phase transition temperature of bulk 5CB.