Side‐on main‐chain liquid crystalline polymers prepared by acyclic diene metathesis polymerization and thiol‐ene click step‐growth polymerization

Abstract

In this manuscript, we design and synthesize a series of X‐shaped mesogenic monomers, bearing two terminal‐alkene tails. Starting from these X‐shaped monomers, acyclic diene metathesis polymerization and thiol‐ene polyaddition are applied for the first time to prepare two series of side‐on main‐chain liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs), respectively. The mesomorphic behaviors and structure‐property relationships of these new polymers are studied in detail by a combination of 1H NMR, GPC, TGA, DSC, POM, and XRD experiments. It turns out that the length of alkoxy terminal chains of the embedded mesogens and the length of the spacer connecting two adjacent mesogens on the polymer backbones markedly influence the mesomorphic properties. Furthermore, a side‐on main‐chain liquid crystalline elastomer fiber is prepared by crosslinking the LCP using a UV‐sensitive bifunctional benzophenone crosslinker. In comparison with the pure polymer fiber's monodomain alignment, the crosslinked elastomer fiber however shows nonaligned polydomain structure, probably due to the order competitions between the mixed crosslinkers, mesogens, and polymer backbones. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2014, 52, 1086–1098

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