The design and study of lemniscular and helicene based molecules

我将应用有机合成技术来形成新的分子，这些分子要么是螺旋形的，要么是八字形的。这些分子是手性的，为在镜像对称破缺的背景下操纵体相提供了有趣的可能性。我们将特别研究自组装及其作为掺杂剂液晶材料的用途。一些有趣的可能性是开发这些材料，以期检验我们是否可以形成奇异的软物质拓扑准粒子。我们将寻求用一系列成像技术来表征这些材料，包括偏振光学显微镜、共焦显微镜、电子显微镜和高速动态成像。我们设想在小尺寸液滴中可重复形成拓扑缺陷具有显著的光学性质，未来可能在显示和存储器存储应用方面具有方向。我们将与软物质模型师密切合作，努力了解这种复杂的打结缺陷是如何在动力学环境中形成的。我们已经开始研究的拓扑缺陷具有从小到大尺度的自组装结构的影响，即从粒子物理到宇宙学，因此可管理的尺度，如软物质化学，提供了一个理想的机会来扩展我们在物理科学中的知识。

I will be applying organic synthetic techniques to forming novel molecules which have either a helical or figure-ofeightshape. These molecules are chiral and offer intriguing possibilities for the manipulation of bulk phases in thecontext of mirror image symmetry breaking. We will especially look to study self-assembly and their use as dopantsin liquid crystalline materials. Some intriguing possibilities are to develop these materials with a view to examining thepossibility of whether we can form exotic soft-matter topological quasiparticles.We will seek to characterise these materials with a range if imaging techniques including polarised opticalmicroscopy, confocal microscopy, electron microscopy and high-speed dynamical imaging.We envisage the reproducible formation of topological defects in small dimension droplets as having remarkableoptical properties with possible future directions in display and memory storage applications. We will work closelywith soft-matter modellers and work towards an understanding of how such complex knotted defects form in adynamical context. The topological defects we have started to examine have implications of self-assembledstructures from the small to the large scales, i.e. particle physics through to cosmology, and hence manageablescales, such as soft-matter chemistry offer an ideal opportunity to expand our knowledge across scales in thephysical sciences.