Dynamics of Tail Free Liquid Crystals

ORAL

Abstract

The overwhelming majority of discotic liquid crystals (DLC's) have rigid cores surrounded by flexible tails that help the molecules self assemble into long columns of molecules separated from each other by a soft buffer of tails. Here we consider a recently discovered set of isomeric tail free compounds, including several which are DLC's despite lacking the tails which are generally considered to be a requirement. We will explore how small structural changes in the molecules are responsible for the formation of a liquid crystalline mesophase through a combination of molecular dynamics simulations and experimental measurements.

*We gratefully acknowledge support from the NSF (award 1809536)
This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. Specifically, it used the Bridges system, which is supported by NSF award number ACI-1445606, at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC).

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Presenters

  • Mitch Powers

    • Department of Physics, Kent State University

Authors

  • Mitch Powers

    • Department of Physics, Kent State University

  • Parikshit Guragain

    • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kent State University

  • Zhe Li

    • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kent State University

  • Robert J Twieg

    • Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kent State University

  • John Portman

    • Department of Physics, Kent State University

  • Brett Ellman

    • Department of Physics, Kent State University