Combinatorial organic materials research (COMR): design, synthesis and screening of a 225-membered materials library of liquid crystalline fluorinated p-quaterphenylsElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: tables of product yield and purity, and NMR spectra and HPLC traces.. See http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/ob/b2/b212107g/

The rapid solution phase synthesis of novel liquid crystalline materials is demonstrated by utilising combinatorial and parallel methods for the preparation of a library of 225 differently fluorinated 4,4"-dipropyl-p-quaterphenyls. Chemical diversity was introduced into the growing oligomers via a convergent synthetic sequence of iodinations and Suzuki cross-couplings by using various fluorinated phenyl building blocks. A highly efficient rapid parallel purification method was developed that provided HPLC-pure library members in amounts sufficient for the characterization of bulk properties.