Helical twisting properties of new chiral dopants with double (S)-1,2-propanediol units for nematic liquid crystals

A novel series of chiral dopants synthesized from (S)-1,2-propanediol and mesogenic carboxylic acids were characterized by FT-IR, 1H NMR, elemental analysis and their helical twisting properties were investigated by doping the chiral dopants into a nematic liquid crystal host (SLC-1717). The results show that, the helical pitch of N*-LC mixture exhibited a terminal alkyl chain length dependence and the molecular twisting power β also exhibited a temperature dependence (increasing β with increasing temperature).