Photochemical Chirality Induction and Inversion in Soft Materials

Glycomacrocycle-Based Azobenzene Derivatives as Chiral Dopants for Photoresponsive Cholesteric Liquid Crystals

“…Photoresponsive liquid crystalline (LC) system has attracted considerable interest to a very promising area of soft photonics and mechanics. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Under light irradiation, it is possible to modulate or switch the orientation of LC molecules to achieve desired optical and mechanical properties of this system remotely and selectively. Especially, by introducing suitable photoresponsive chiral dopant in achiral nematic liquid crystal (NLC), self-organized chiral NLC or cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) is formed exhibiting superstructural chirality.…”

“…The photoresponsive liquid crystal (LC) system has attracted considerable interest to a very promising area of soft photonics and mechanics. − Under light irradiation, it is possible to modulate or switch the orientation of LC molecules to achieve the desired optical and mechanical properties of this system remotely and selectively. Especially, by introducing a suitable photoresponsive chiral dopant in the achiral nematic liquid crystal (NLC), a self-organized chiral NLC or cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) is formed, exhibiting superstructural chirality. − Its helical orientation and pitch length can be dynamically controlled by light enabling the practical photonic applications for reflective displays, − diffraction light stirring, , information storage, , and mirrorless lasing , as well as in molecular mechanical systems, for example, molecular switch − and molecular machine development. − Experimentally, the ability to twist or the helical twisting power (HTP, β ) of the chiral dopant can be quantified and represented by β = ( PC ) −1 , where C and P are the concentration of the dopant and the pitch of the helix, respectively .…”