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Science 21 February 2003:
Vol. 299. no. 5610, pp. 1208 - 1211
DOI: 10.1126/science.1078849
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Reports

Giant Supramolecular Liquid Crystal Lattice

Goran Ungar,1* Yongsong Liu,1 Xiangbing Zeng,1 Virgil Percec,2 Wook-Dong Cho2

Self-organized supramolecular organic nanostructures have potential applications that include molecular electronics, photonics, and precursors for nanoporous catalysts. Accordingly, understanding how self-assembly is controlled by molecular architecture will enable the design of increasingly complex structures. We report a liquid crystal (LC) phase with a tetragonal three-dimensional unit cell containing 30 globular supramolecular dendrimers, each of which is self-assembled from 12 dendron (tree-like) molecules, for the compounds described here. The present structure is one of the most complex LC phases yet discovered. A model explaining how spatial arrangement of self-assembled dendritic aggregates depends on molecular architecture and temperature is proposed.

1 Department of Engineering Materials, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK.
2 Roy and Diana Vagelos Laboratories, Department of Chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323, USA.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: g.ungar{at}shef.ac.uk

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