MORPHOLOGICAL STUDIES OF A THERMOTROPIC SIDE-CHAIN LIQUID CRYSTALLINE POLYMER DURING MESOPHASE TRANSITIONS

The morphological features of a side-chain liquid crystalline polymer during the mesophase transitions were investigated by using the DSC technique. The polymer used was polyacrylate with mesogens of three benzene rings attached to the main chain through a flexible spacer. A special two-phase texture was observed in the transition temperature range. Similar to main-chain liquid crystalline polymers the transition process of the side-chain liquid crystalline polymer was composed of an initiation of the new phase at local places of the old phase matrix and a growth process of the new phase domains.

MORPHOLOGICAL AND KINETIC STUDIES OF PHASE TRANSITIONS OF A SIDE-CHAIN LIQUID CRYSTALLINE POLYMER

The morphological changes of a side-chain liquid-crystalline polymethacrylate during isotropization and liquid-crystallization transitions were studied by means of polarizing microscopy. These transitions were found to be composed of the initiation of a new phase at local places of the old phase matrix and the growth of the new phase: domains. The kinetics of the liquid-crystallization of the polymer from an isotropic melt to a smectic mesophase was also investigated. The isothermal process of the transition can be described by the Avrami equation. The values of the Avrami exponent were found to be around 2.6. which is lower than the value usually obtained for crystallization transition of polymers, but larger than that reported for liquid-crystallization transition of main-chain polymers. These results may indicate the difference in growth geometry of new phase during transition between crystallization and liquid-crystallization in general and between liquid-crystallization of main-chain and side-chain polymers. It was found that the liquid-crystallization of the used side-chain polymethacrylate may occur at small undercoolings with high transformation rate similar to that of main-chain polymers and small-molecule liquid crystals, while the crystallization of polymers can only proceed at large undercoolings. These phenomena can be explained by the idea that the surface free energy of nucleus during liquid-crystallization transition is less than that for crystallization, and evidence was obtained from analysis of the temperature dependence of the transformation rate.

Liquid crystal character controlled by complementary discotic molecules mixtures： Columnar stacking type and mesophase temperature range

In this work, the mesophase properties were tuned via mixing two discotic molecules with structural complementarity. Compared with the liquid crystalline hexakis（n-hexyloxy）triphenylene（H6TP）materials（columnar hexagonal phase from 53 ℃ to 91 ℃）, mesophase types as well as phase transition temperatures varied with the introduction of crystalline hexaazatriphenylene derivative（PBH）molecules. The introduction of less than 33% amount of PBH disrupted the columnar hexagonal phase formed by H6 TP remarkably, followed by the decreased clearing temperatures of liquid crystals. As the PBH amount was further increased, the destroyed columnar hexagonal phase was turned into the columnar rectangular phase, in which H6 TP and PBH molecules together formed the columnar mesophase. The formation of new mesophase contributed to the enlarged mesophase temperature（from44 ℃ to 144 ℃）. We speculated that the alkyl chains interaction induced by the PBH component competed with the strong p–p stacking between H6 TP molecules, thus altering the liquid crystalline properties including mesophase types and phase transition temperatures.