Development of nematic and orthogonal smectic phases in short-core fluorinated hockey-stick shaped liquid crystal compounds

Abstract Here we report synthesis and investigations on novel short-core hockey-stick shaped molecules bearing a 4-n-alkyloxy-2-hydroxybenzylidene moiety at one end and polar fluoro-biphenyl moiety at the other end. The polar chloro and fluoro substituent at the lateral position of the core confers nematic and orthogonal smectic mesomorphism. The mesophase morphology is characterized by polarizing optical microscopy (POM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction (XRD), electro-optical study and dielectric spectroscopy. The fluorinated compounds 1b (n = 16) and 1c (n = 18) have long terminal hydrocarbon tail and show orthogonal smectic phases with antiferroelectric switching behaviour. The chlorinated compound 2e (n = 8) with relatively short terminal chain length exhibits only a monotropic nematic phase on cooling. The nematic phase is comprised of cybotactic clusters as confirmed by XRD and exhibits electro-optic switching. The compound 2i (n = 12) manifests a short range enantiotropic nematic and additional orthogonal smectic phase. Dielectric spectroscopy reveals polar correlations in the nematic and smectic phases.