Asst. Prof. Ömer Dağ and graduate student Özgür Çelik have discovered a new Liquid Crystalline (LC) system, which was published as a frontispeice in the communication section of the prestigious journal, Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The cover picture depicts the polarized optical microscopy image (characteristic to hexagonal phase of LCs) and a schematic diagram for this system.
   The non-ionic surfactants show LC behavior upon homogeneous mixing with water molecules. In this article, Dr. Dağ and Mr. Çelik have demonstrated even stronger liquid crystalline, hexagonal and cubic structures in the presence of metal ion water complexes. The new system offers new templates for sol-gel chemistry to synthesise regularly porous metal sulphides, metal oxides, and metals with pore dimensions in the range of 3 to 10 nm. These materials with very large surface areas are important in the fields of catalysis, photo-catalysis, adsorption-desorption, host-quest chemistry etc.
   For further information, please contact dag@fen.bilkent.edu.tr. The journal is available at Bilkent University Library (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2001,40, 3799-3803).