The solution structure of the deuterated liquid crystal polyamide polymer (LCP), poly(p-phenylene-2-nitroterephthalamide), alone and mixed with small, rodlike, amide, liquid crystal molecules (LCT) in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP) is studied using small-angle neutron scattering. Measurements were made as a function of LCP concentration using different LCT's mixed at 20 and 40 wt % relative to LCP. The motivation for studying this system comes from a need to connect solution structure with film morphology in processing these materials for high performance molecular composites. The analysis shows that the LCP in NMP forms large domain-like structures. The presence of LCT breaks up the LCP domains into smaller structures, some of which are filamentous, LCP-LCT aggregates. This result suggests that the simple entropic description of solution behavior of mixtures of long and short rods is not adequate in describing systems of this type. (ERA citation 19:022089)
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