Understanding the remarkable difference in liquid crystal behaviour between secondary and tertiary amides: the synthesis and characterisation of new benzanilide-based liquid crystal dimers.

A number of liquid crystal dimers have been synthesised and characterised containing secondary or tertiary (N-methyl) benzanilide-based mesogenic groups. The secondary amides all form nematic phases, and we present the first example of an amide to show the twist-bend nematic (NTB) phase. Only two of the corresponding N-methylated dimers formed a nematic phase and with greatly reduced nematic-isotropic transition temperatures. Characterisation using 2D ROESY NMR experiments, DFT geometry optimisation and X-ray diffraction reveal that there is a change in the preferred conformation of the benzanilide core on methylation, from Z to E. The rotational barrier around the N-C(O) bond has been measured using variable temperature 1H NMR spectroscopy. This dramatic change in shape accounts for the remarkable difference in liquid crystalline behaviour between these secondary and tertiary amide-based materials.