Morphology and Property Control in Polymer Thin Films and Membranes through theUse of Self-Assembling Monomers

摘要

The formation of highly ordered polymer networks using liquid-crystalline (LC)monomers was studied in the context of developing new polymers for use as piezoelectric, dye laser host, and membrane materials. Photopolymerizable, crosslinkable monomers based on thermotropic and lyotropic LC's were sought for these purposes. A precursor to a suitable chiral smectic C monomer for the formation of noncentrosymmetric polymer networks has been synthesized. Two new crosslinkable dye molecules have been developed for alignment and polymerization studies inside LC monomer host matrices. Finally, two lyotropic LC monomers have been developed that result in ordered nanoporous polymer networks when photopolymerized.