New Chiral Thiols and Related Side Chain Liquid Crystalline Polymers
摘要:
New series of chiral thiols with three aromatic rings and the N = N group in the molecular core have been synthesized and grafted on polybutadiene diols backbone. The resulting polymers possess the OH end groups for possible preparation of the liquid crystal ordered networks. Basic properties of the thiols and resulting polybutadiene diols have been studied by polarizing microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry. The resulting diol-based polymers show the liquid crystalline behaviour in a broad temperature range. The effect of the side chain structure and density of grafting on the properties of polybutadiene diols has been studied and discussed.
A comparative study of the photo-optical properties and the photo-orientation processes in thin films of the bent-shaped azobenzene-containing compounds with different molecular structure was performed. For this purpose three new compounds were designed and prepared: two of these compounds with a symmetric bent-shaped molecular structure incorporate two azobenzene chromophores with different length of alkyl chains (6 and 8 methylene units), the third bent-shaped compound possesses only one azobenzene fragment. The effect of molecular and supramolecular structure, thermal prehistory of the films, wavelengths of the excitation light on the photo-optical properties, photoorientation processes and films morphology was revealed. It was shown that UV-irradiation leads to E-Z isomerization of azobenzene fragments in both amorphousized and crystalline films of the synthesized substances. This process is partially suppressed in crystalline films, but, nevertheless, UV-irradiation of the bichromophoric compounds results in transition from crystalline to amorphous state and decrease in the surface roughness. Irradiation of amorphousized films with polarized visible and UV-light induces the photoorientation of chromophores in direction perpendicular to the polarization plane of the incident light. Relatively high values of photoinduced dichroism in the bent-shaped compounds (D similar to 0.60-0.65) are comparable with other azobenzene-containing rod-shaped systems. Photoinduced isothermal melting and photoorientation processes could be served for the photo-optical data recording and storage. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.