Homohelicity-enriched zinc bilinone dimers with chiral aliphatic spacers. Synthesis and application to chiral induction of a nematic liquid crystal

The zinc bilinone (ZnBL) dimers 4 and 5 bearing chiral aliphatic spacers ((2S,4S)-2,4-pentanedioxy and (3S,5S)-2,6-dimethyl-3,5-heptanedioxy for 4 and 5, respectively) were newly prepared, and their conformational distribution was investigated. The 1H NMR and circular dichroism spectra revealed that the present dimers predominantly adopted the homohelicity conformation (MM and PP for 4 and 5, respectively), although the reference monomers with the corresponding subunit structures exhibited poor helicity enrichment. The helical twisting powers of these ZnBL dimers for a nematic liquid crystal (N-(4-methoxybenzylidene)-4-butylaniline, MBBA) were also investigated. With the dimers doped into MBBA, highly efficient chiral nematic induction was achieved. Especially, the dimer 5 exhibited the βM value of +1800 μm−1.