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By decorating 96-carbon superphenalenes (shown) with long hydrocarbon chains (indicated by R groups), Klaus Müllen and coworkers at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, have made compounds that have good film-forming properties and that can be processed into soft, highly soluble columnar liquid-crystalline materials [Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 43, 755 (2004)]. Despite the compounds' large aromatic core, they easily dissolve in common organic solvents at room temperature--a phenomenon the researchers attribute to inefficient packing of the R groups around otherwise well-organized self-assembled columns. The group achieves roughly 68% overall yield for the two-step synthesis of the compounds from readily available starting materials. They also have made molecules in which the R groups are benzoate esters that could be further modified.
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