Optical Absorption and Light Emission of a Banana-Shaped Liquid Crystal

Abstract

With the ultraviolet-visible spectrometer and photospectrometer, we have investigated the optical absorption and light emission from the dilute tetrahydrofuran solutions of a classical banana-shaped liquid crystal 1,3-phenylene-bis[4-(4'-nonyloxy)phenyliminomethyl]benzoate. In the dilute tetrahydrofuran solutions, three optical absorption bands were recorded for the banana-shaped compound at about 255, 290 and 355 nm, respectively. Upon the 325 nm excitation, white light emissions were recorded for the solid phase of the banana-shaped liquid crystal whereas blue-greenish emissions were observed for the banana-shaped molecules in dilute solution.