Cover Picture: Nanostructuring with a Crosslinkable Discotic Material (Small 8/2007)

Nanostructuring with a crosslinkable discotic material.

A high-yielding synthesis afforded a hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene carrying acrylate units at the end of six attached alkyl spacers. The polymerization of these acrylate moieties could be initiated with thermal energy and through direct photoactivation without the addition of a photoinitiator. This allowed the organization of the liquid-crystalline material to be fixed in either the crystalline state or the mesophase, which preserved the organization in the respective phase. The use of a focused synchrotron beam permitted selected regions of a thin film to be rendered insoluble. After "developing" the film in this lithographic process by dissolving the soluble, unpolymerized material, defined…