Influence of structures of monomer in liquid crystal/polymer composite films

Abstract

We investigated the effect of several factors, such as monomer structures, LC species, fraction volume of LC, polymerization conditions, on the photo polymerization induced phase separation process(PIPSP) in liquid crystal/polymer composite films. Especially in order to study the effect of the structures monomer on the PIPSP, we synthesized several kind of bifunctional acrylates with different alkyl side chain length. It is clarified that phase-separation process and resulting polymer morphology is remarkably affected by the structure and cohesive energy of monomer as well as the solubility between LC/monomer and curing conditions.