Discotic liquid crystals self-assemble to highly ordered hexagonal columnar mesophase (Col_ho) and exhibit anisotropic high charge carrier mobility, and can be used as organic opto-electronic materials. Hydrogen bonding stabilized triphenylene discotic liquid crystals with ordered Col_ho phases and wider mesophase ranges are the goals of present research. In this paper, three series with total of eighteen triphenylene discotic liquid crystalline compounds possessing two different kinds of peripheral chains, which are abbreviated as C₁₈H₆(OR)₅(OCH₂COOEt), C₁₈H₆(OR)₅(OCH₂COOBu) and C₁₈H₆(OR)₅- (OCH₂CONHBu), R＝C_nH_2n＋1, n＝4～9, were synthesized. The structural characterization of these compounds was carried out with ¹H NMR and elemental analysis. The thermal gravimetry analysis showed that all these compounds had good thermal stability up to 300 ℃. Their thermotropic liquid crystal properties were studied through polarized optical microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. The results showed that, for compounds C₁₈H₆(OR)₅(OCH₂CONHBu) and C₁₈H₆(OR)₅(OCH₂COOBu), the former has higher melting and clearing points than the latter due to the intra-columnar intermolecular hydrogen bonding.

Key words: triphenylene, discotic liquid crystal, columnar mesophase, intermolecular hydrogen bonding, anchorage of columnar mesophase