Nematic tolanes and acetylenes was written by Skelton, Graham W.;Dong, Dewen;Tuffin, Rachel P.;Kelly, Stephen M.. And the article was included in Journal of Materials Chemistry in 2003.Synthetic Route of C18H18O This article mentions the following:
The 1st liquid crystals incorporating a nonconjugated C-C triple bond in the terminal chain to exhibit a nematic phase above the m.p. are reported. A variety of compounds incorporating a C-C triple bond in the terminal chain or between two Ph rings were synthesized as part of a study of the effects of the shape, conformation and rigidity of the terminal chains of liquid crystals on their mesophase behavior. Related tolanes incorporating an alkenyloxy chain with an addnl. C-C double bond or a simple alkoxy chain as a terminal substituent also were prepared for comparison purposes. In the experiment, the researchers used many compounds, for example, 1-Methoxy-4-((4-propylphenyl)ethynyl)benzene (cas: 39969-26-1Synthetic Route of C18H18O).
1-Methoxy-4-((4-propylphenyl)ethynyl)benzene (cas: 39969-26-1) belongs to ethers. The oxygen atom in ethers are more electronegative than carbon, thus the hydrogens which are alpha to the ethers are more acidic than the simple hydrocarbons. Ethers are good solvents partly because they are not very reactive. Most ethers can be cleaved, however, by hydrobromic acid (HBr) to give alkyl bromides or by hydroiodic acid (HI) to give alkyl iodides.Synthetic Route of C18H18O
Referemce:
Ether – Wikipedia,
Ether | (C2H5)2O – PubChem