From Columnar Liquid Crystals to Carbon Nanobelts

Condensed polycylic graphene segments surrounded by solubilizing alkyl chains and electron-withdrawing or -donating substituents can give rise to optoelectronically interesting materials both because of their intramolecular pi electron structure and because of their selfassembly into stacks/columns.

Especially carboxylic substituents such as ester and imide groups lead to self-assembly into columnar liquid crystalline phases and allow the modulation of donor/acceptor properties by slight changes in the substitution pattern.

After a brief general introduction of columnar liquid crystals, I will both describe our efforts aiming at organic devices such as solar cells and LEDs based on columnar liquid crystalline materials, and our first results towards ribbon- and belt-like fully condensed graphene segments.