Structural colour' based on C-3 building Block with glycerol skeleton

摘要

In nature, unique type of charming colour development as the extraordinary beautiful cobalt-blue colour of the Morpho butterfly such as in the middle south America is well known. Mason had proposed that this colour originates from light diffraction and scattering resulted from the ordered micro structures. The "structural colour" has been studying from biological microstructure to architectural optics based on molecular self-assembly. Liquid Crystals (LCs) are one of the typical construction caused by molecular self-organization (or molecular engineering) of amphiphilic materials (amphiphiles) easily available from natural resources as fats and oils. Under the formation of lyotropic LCs, the amphiphilic molecules form micellar bilayer structures wherein mixing water and amphiphile (surfactants), the bilayer LC changes the bilayer thickness (interlamellar spacing) wherefrom the appearance of the "structural colour" by Bragg's light interference could be expected and observed in fact. The first surfactant systems showing iridescent colour consisted of 1 -2 percent aqueous solution of some diglyceryl alkyl ethers are reported by us in 1984. After this, the artificial iridescent colour phenomena based on the surfactant systems have been observed by several researchers. We had discovered the above artificial "structural colour" during the studies on the LCs formation behaviour of some glyceryl ether derivatives as C-3 building block with glycerol skeleton those which are belong to low molecular weight block molecules causing respective mesophase morphologies proposed by Tsciherske group. The results show that auite simple low molecular weight molecules synthesized by chemical reaction via covalent bonds, if appropriately designed, can lead to rather complex by molecular self-assembly via non-covalent bonds. Furthermore, the simple low molecular weight molecules from nature-oriented "Oleo-chemicals" such as glycerols (C-3 building block) can contribute to build up the environmental compatible and sustainable growth via renewable materials.