Design, Synthese und Charakterisierung superkomplexer Nanostrukturen flüssigkristalliner selbstorganosierter molekularer Stäbchen in Fran-Kasper Phasen

The aim of this project is to extend the concept of longitudinal rod-bundle phases to structures involving other valences, mixed valences and leading to more complex structures based on non-cubic tetrahedra packing of rod-bundles, leading to a new family of complex Frank-Kasper phases representing organizations of discrete rod bundles in space.
- Special focus is on the understanding of the origin of the formation of complex instead of simple structures and in how far the rod-packing and frustration of the tetrahedra packing in the distinct coordination polyhedra is affected by the intrinsic soft sphere packing which is largely governed by the minimization of the surface area of the duals, representing the foams formed by the Voronoi cells separating the spheres.
- This work is also expected to provide a new function of rod-like units in LC self-assembly; whereas commonly the rod-like segments are considered as the major source of long range orientational order, here they provide a long range periodicity in all three directions of space.
- For this purpose new X-shaped and star-shaped molecular rods with varying chain volume, chemical structure and degree of branching of the tethered flexible chains will be synthesized and their self-assembly will be investigated by DSC, polarizing microscopy, different XRD methods, AFM, TEM and molecular modelling and molecular dynamics simulation.

The aim of this project is to discover and understand the formation of new complex modes of LC self-assembly of tethered molecular rods, especially those based on tetrahedra packing of rod-bundles, representing fluid modes of self assembly where the individual molecules are free to move.