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Frustrated Behavior of a Side‐Chain Liquid Crystalline Polyacrylate
Author(s) -
Boiko Natalia,
Shibaev Valery,
Ostrovskii Boris,
Sulyanov Sergey,
Wolff Dietmar,
Springer Jürgen
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
macromolecular chemistry and physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.57
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1521-3935
pISSN - 1022-1352
DOI - 10.1002/1521-3935(20010101)202:2<297::aid-macp297>3.0.co;2-q
Subject(s) - mesogen , side chain , liquid crystal , steric effects , polymer , phase (matter) , chemistry , polymerization , polymer chemistry , crystallography , materials science , organic chemistry , liquid crystalline , optoelectronics
Polyacrylate with phenyl benzoate mesogenic side groups was synthesized and fractionated into narrow fractions. Structure and phase behavior of the narrow‐molecular‐weight samples have been studied by X‐ray diffraction. Depending on the degree of polymerization the polymer shows nematic, smectic A d , re‐entrant nematic and new phase with two‐dimensional (2D) periodicity. Such behaviour is implicit to so‐called frustrated systems. However, the mesogenic side chains are nonpolar and thus the origin of frustration is different from that in conventional polar liquid crystals. We found that this phenomenon is steric (entropic) in nature and depends on the length of the polymer backbone. The phase transformations of mesogen side chain polyacrylates are discussed in terms of coupling between the smectic ordering of the side groups and the polymer backbone conformations.