| Abstract: | We report on our serendipitous finding of the anomalous behavior of a novel liquid crystalline (LC) molecule U H/H , containing a U‐shaped handle. While U H/H itself shows a bicontinuous cubic (Cubbi) phase, U H/H in the presence of pyrene molecules as an external guest forms a hexagonal columnar (Colh) phase without phase separation. Interestingly, even when the pyrene molecules were covalently attached to U H/H ( U Py/Py ), the molecule exhibited a Colh phase, with a similar columnar geometry to that of U H/H mixed with pyrene molecules (1–4 equiv.). This result means that no matter how the pyrene moieties are incorporated in the LC system, the resultant material exhibited a similar molecular assembly with a columnar geometry. This finding is interesting because U H/H and pyrene molecules do not seem to have specific interactions or shape complementarity to form a columnar assembly, as in the case of U Py/Py . © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2019 , 57, 342–351 |
