Hemiphasmidic Side-Chain Liquid Crystalline Polymer: From Smectic C Phase to Columnar Phase with a Bundle of Chains as Its Building Block

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• 作者：Jun-Feng Zheng ; Xin Liu ; Xiao-Fang Chen ; Xiang-Kui Ren ; Shuang Yang ; Er-Qiang Chen
• 刊名：ACS Macro Letters
• 出版年：2012
• 出版时间：May 15, 2012
• 年：2012
• 卷：1
• 期：5
• 页码：641-645
• 全文大小：301K
• 年卷期：v.1,no.5(May 15, 2012)
• ISSN：2161-1653

文摘

We synthesized a new hemiphasmidic side-chain liquid crystalline polymer (P-n, n is the number of carbons in alky tail of the side chain, n = 4鈥?2) using free radical polymerization. The side chain of P-n has a biphenyl in the middle, linked to the polystyrene backbone and to the terminal phenyl group with three alkyl tails via only methyleneoxy units. Upon increasing n, the mesophase of P-n changes from bilayer smectic C to hexagonal columnar (桅_h) phase with the a-dimension of 6 nm. Both of the mesophases are long-range ordered, which can be well aligned by simple shearing. The oriented 桅_h shows a quite low rotational disorder around the shear direction. Most likely, the 桅_h phase takes a bundle of chains (e.g., five chains) rather than a single chain as its building block. This 鈥渕ulti-chain model鈥?of the 桅_h phase may represent a new type of self-assembly in side-chain polymers.