TY - JOUR
T1 - Rewriting the phase diagram of a diamagnetic liquid crystal by a magnetic field
AU - Hajjaj, Fatin
AU - Kajitani, Takashi
AU - Ohsumi, Hiroyuki
AU - Tanaka, Yoshikazu
AU - Kato, Kenichi
AU - Takata, Masaki
AU - Kitazawa, Hideaki
AU - Arima, Taka hisa
AU - Aida, Takuzo
AU - Fukushima, Takanori
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas “π-Figuration” (26102008) from The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan and KAKENHI (24655118, 25247054 and 17H01034) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). This work was also supported in part by “Dynamic Alliance for Open Innovation Bridging Human, Environment and Materials” from MEXT, Japan. T.F. thanks the Tokuyama Science Foundation and the Sumitomo Foundation for financial support. T. Aida is grateful for a JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Specially Promoted Research on the Physically Perturbed Assembly for Tailoring High-Performance Soft Materials with Controlled Macroscopic Structural Anisotropy (25000005). F.H. thanks the World Premier International Research Center (WPI) Initiative on Materials Nanoarchitectonics and the International Center for Young Scientists (ICYS). The synchrotron XRD experiments were performed at the BL19LXU, BL44B2 and BL45XU beamlines at SPring-8 with the approval of the RIKEN SPring-8 Center (proposal numbers 20120045, 20130025, 20140056, 20150068, 20160027 and 20170055) and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI; proposal number 2014B1255). We thank Prof. K. Kadowaki and Dr. T. Kashiwagi (The University of Tsukuba) for FIR measurements. We are grateful to Prof. G. Ungar and Dr. X. Zeng (The University of Sheffield) for valuable discussion about structural characterization.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Magnetic fields have been considered to only interact with organic materials non-destructively, leaving their fundamental structures unaffected, even when a strong magnetic field generated from a superconducting magnet is applied. Here we report an unprecedented observation that a liquid-crystalline mesophase of a diamagnetic molecular assembly with an orthorhombic or a cubic structure is formed selectively in the absence or presence of a strong magnetic field. The constituent molecule is a triphenylene derivative carrying six imidazolium bromide-terminated alkyl side chains and exhibits a cubic, orthorhombic, or hexagonal columnar mesophase when complexed with an appropriate amount of lanthanum(III) bromide. Thermal processing of the La3+-containing liquid-crystalline assembly in the presence of a 10-tesla magnetic field resulted in a phase diagram, in which the orthorhombic phase is completely replaced with the cubic phase. The discovery of this magneto-induced phase-selection offers an insight into the interactions between magnetic fields and organic material.
AB - Magnetic fields have been considered to only interact with organic materials non-destructively, leaving their fundamental structures unaffected, even when a strong magnetic field generated from a superconducting magnet is applied. Here we report an unprecedented observation that a liquid-crystalline mesophase of a diamagnetic molecular assembly with an orthorhombic or a cubic structure is formed selectively in the absence or presence of a strong magnetic field. The constituent molecule is a triphenylene derivative carrying six imidazolium bromide-terminated alkyl side chains and exhibits a cubic, orthorhombic, or hexagonal columnar mesophase when complexed with an appropriate amount of lanthanum(III) bromide. Thermal processing of the La3+-containing liquid-crystalline assembly in the presence of a 10-tesla magnetic field resulted in a phase diagram, in which the orthorhombic phase is completely replaced with the cubic phase. The discovery of this magneto-induced phase-selection offers an insight into the interactions between magnetic fields and organic material.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-06976-7
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-06976-7
M3 - Article
C2 - 30361534
AN - SCOPUS:85055415561
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 4431
ER -