Designing Electrically Anisotropic Materials via Self-Assembly of Liquid Crystalline Components

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Professor Lee Park of Williams College Chemistry Department is supported by the Inorganic, Bioinorganic and Organometallic Chemistry program for her materials chemistry studies on strategies for preparing electrically anisotropic materials. Electrically anisotropic materials will be prepared via the careful design of discrete small molecules that can aggregate by means of non-covalent interactions to give a one-dimensional structure. Materials to be explored include a family of donor-acceptor stabilized liquid crystalline compounds, a Pt2+ based metallomesogenic materials, metal-containing liquid crystal systems, and alignment strategies for columnar materials using chemically modified alumina templates. Metallomesogens and the individual component molecules to be developed may serve as building blocks for supramolecular syntheses. Also, these materials have potential for NLO applications as novel octupolar materials. This research will focus on the development of new materials through the synthesis of small molecules that aggregate in a specified manner, via a liquid crystalline phase, to give rise to supramolecular structures with anisotropic properties. The metallomesogenic materials, metal-containing liquid crystal systems, studied under this award are attractive candidates for a wide range of materials science applications, with potential uses in molecular scale electronics, including sensors, or as nonlinear optical materials. Undergraduate students will receive multifaceted training in materials synthesis and characterization.