Self-assembled, mesoscopically ordered materials possess a number of intriguing properties that suggest potential applications in the separation of chemical or biological species, including the separation of enantiomers. These materials include both lyotropic and thermotropic liquid crystals. There exists a large library of materials known to form thermotropic liquid crystalline (LC) phases. Unfortunately, the published reports for the majority of these materials concentrate exclusively on their suitability for use in optoelectronic devices and do not expand on their transport properties.

We have begun to explore the suitability of several thermotropic liquid crystalline materials for the separation of chemical components. Our initial studies have concentrated on the development of techniques to accurately measure the diffusion rates and solubilities of solutes in LC materials in order to examine the dependence of molecule size, structure and functionality on solute permeability.