Click chemistry has received much attention in organic and polymeric materials chemistry, because it can provide a very efficient synthetic pathway for designing soft materials. [1] To date, click chemistry has been mostly utilized to simply bridge organic building units into more complex architectures, such as dendrimers, block copolymers, and cyclic compounds. [2] However, more attention is now paid to the functionality of click chemistry, and particularly in the use of the resulting triazole ring. As an interesting example, several research groups recently investigated the anion-binding properties of triazole derivatives, although some research regarding metal coordination were also reported. [3] Craig et al. demonstrated that aryl triazole based oligomers can bind anions by utilizing the electropositive CH group of the triazole group. [4] Contemporaneously, Hecht and Meudtner reported an unprecedented helix inversion in response to halide ions in triazolelinked foldamers, [5] and Flood and Li observed a strong, selective affinity of shape-persisted triazolophanes for chloride ions. [6] Such an anion-binding capability of clicked triazole-based compounds can be understood as privileged hydrogen bonding (H-bonding) between the anion and the CH group of the triazole ring.
Discotic liquid crystals (LCs) consisting of a flat aromatic core and flexible chains are known to form columnar mesophases. The columnar architecture formed by discotic LCs is very attractive because it provides a one-dimensional conducting pathway for electrons, photons, or energy.