Functional Liquid Crystalline Polymers: Ferroelectric Polymers and Liquid Crystalline Elastomers and Ionomers

Abstract The incorporation of different functional groups in liquid crystalline polymers opens the way to a variety of interesting new materials, which may be used for non-linear optics, as piezo-elements or as two-phasic composite materials.

Second harmonic generation in ferroelectric liquid crystalline thiadiazole derivatives

Molecular Recognition by Hydrogen Bonding in Polyelectrolyte Multilayers

Functional polyanions were prepared by copolymerization of sulfopropyl acrylate and sulfopropyl methacrylate with monomers bearing triaminopyrimidine or barbituric acid functionalities, respectively. Functionalized polyelectrolyte multilayers were assembled from these copolymers by stepwise alternating adsorption with poly(choline methacrylate). These multilayers are suited for molecular recognition of substrates that are complementary to the functional groups incorporated. Thus, multilayers containing triaminopyrimidine moieties selectively bind barbituric acid, and vice versa, when exposed to solutions of the 1:1 complex of barbituric acid and triaminopyrimidine. The molecular recognition…

Ferroelectric liquid crystalline polysiloxanes designed for high second-order nonlinear susceptibilities

Ferroelectric liquid crystalline (FLC) copolysiloxanes containing suitable comonomers («NLO-chromophores») for second harmonic generation (SHG) have been prepared. Their important feature is a donor-acceptor x-system sited perpendicular to the long axis of the side-group moieties in order to adopt the polar ordering of the ferroelectric LC phase. The influcences of the mesogen structure and of the content of NLO-chromophores on the liquid crystalline and ferroelectric properties are studied. The desired chiral smectic C * phase is retained up to 30 mol-% of chromophore. Also, first measurements of second harmonic generation have been performed