ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the strategies of liquid crystal synthesis are discussed and considers some of the scope and limitations of the synthetic methods used. It illustrates the help of some examples, how liquid crystals are synthesised by describing how the essential structural units are introduced into the desired positions in an efficient manner to provide pure materials. The number of materials has, in part, been restricted by the relative difficulty of synthesis and the perceived lack of applications when compared to the successful calamitic liquid crystals. Perhaps the most important aspect of palladium-catalysed cross-coupling reactions in the efficient, systematic construction of liquid crystals is that selective coupling can occur in a bromo-iodo-substituted system. The synthesis of liquid crystals is an essential area of the liquid crystal field because without materials there can be no evaluation and no applications. Generally, the linear synthesis approach has many disadvantages such as low yields, low efficiency and lack of generality.
