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Jeffrey Meisner
Chemistry

Darren Johnson, Mentor
Colin Nuckolls, Mentor

Hexabenzocoronene (HBC) Derivatives: Toward Self-assembling Molecular Electronics

Hexabenzocorones (HBC) provide a unique scaffold for building discotic liquid crystals. Their shape is not entirely flat, allowing them to interdigitate and fortify the 1-dimensional columnar structures into which it self-assembles. These structures may afford interesting semi-conducting and photovoltaic properties previously unavailable in organic electronic materials. Recently, members of the Nuckolls group developed a convenient and robust synthesis of HBC from simple, inexpensive starting materials. The synthesis was modified to achieve many derivatives, including a dimer, trimer and the incorporation of crown ethers as ion channels. Through investigating the properties of the oligomers, we have gained further understanding of the stacking dynamics of the liquid crystalline derivatives of HBC, as well as discovered potentially new supramolecular structures.