Silver nanodisks in soft discotic forest: Impact on self-assembly, conductivity and molecular packing

Abstract

Two-dimensional functionalized silver nanodisks self-assembled in the columnar mesophase of discotic liquid crystals in a layered forest of “disk-in-discotic” like pattern. By using cryo-scanning electron microscopy and polarized optical microscopy, we observed signature of molecular self-assembly of hydrophobic silver nanodisks in supramolecular structures of discotic liquid crystals at both room temperature as well as at higher temperature. In the proposed model, the columnar stacks of 1,5-dihydroxy-2,3,6,7-tetrakis(3,7-dimethyloctyloxy)-9,10-anthraquinone (RTAQ) discotic are self-assembled over silver nano-disk in a hexagonal manner at 3% by weight which reduces the lattice parameter and intracolumnar packing. Both scanning electron microscope images and X-ray diffraction patterns show that when cooled from isotropic phase to columnar hexagonal phase, discotic molecules self-assembled over and in-between nanodisks to form a large layered forest of discotics.