23rd CEMS Colloquium
Speaker
Dr. Fumito Araoka (Unit Leader, Physicochemical Soft Matter Research Unit, RIKEN CEMS)
Date
17:30 - 18:30, December 17, 2014 (Wednesday)
Venue
Okochi-Hall, RIKEN
Title
Supramolecular Properties of Liquid Crsytals
Abstract
It has already been 125 years past since the first liquid crystal was discovered by Reinitzer. Therefore, liquid crystals are often recognized as an old research subject. However, still they have been continuously attracting many researchers due to their fascinating physical properties inherently possessed by the self-ordered and fluidic systems. From the chemistry viewpoint, a variety of supramolecular structures formed through the self-organizability of mesogenic states also offer many choices in material-designing due to tunability of physico-chemical properties by properly designed molecules and external stimuli, since the compresence of the molecular self-ordering and fluidity brings about versatile of supramolecular states such as chiral superstructures, 1D~3D pi-stacking structures, those characterizing attractive optical and/or electrical properties. Our research unit is mainly studying such physicochmical properties in various supramolecular structures of liquid crystalline soft-matters. Besides, we also pursue their applications, such as for photonics, electronics (semiconductors), chemical- and bio-applications using micro-fluidics. In this presentation, chiral superstructures and their optical properties of achiral bent-core molecules, and ferroelectric columnar supramolecular structure of umbrella-like assemblies (ferroelectric columnar liquid crystal) will be introduced.
