Dynamics of Tail Free Liquid Crystals

The overwhelming majority of discotic liquid crystals (DLC's) have rigid cores surrounded by flexible tails that help the molecules self assemble into long columns of molecules separated from each other by a soft buffer of tails. Here we consider a recently discovered set of isomeric tail free compounds, including several which are DLC's despite lacking the tails which are generally considered to be a requirement. We will explore how small structural changes in the molecules are responsible for the formation of a liquid crystalline mesophase through a combination of molecular dynamics simulations and experimental measurements.