Architecture of Liquid Crystalline Block Copolymers

Liquid crystal block copolymers are a recently explored group of polymers which combine microphase separation and liquid crystallinity. Yet, as early as 1963, Gratzer and Doty [37] reported the first block copolymers containing two polypeptide blocks in which one of the blocks, poly(y-benzyl-L-glutamate) (PBLG), was already well known to be liquid crystalline. In principle, all the LCP structures shown in Fig. 1 can be incorporated into block copolymer structures with a second flexible coil or LC block. Some of the possible LC-BCP structures are shown in Fig. 2. Due to the limited nature of this review, structures such as the grafted LC copolymers [38] and various multiblock LC copolymers [39] will not be covered. 

4 Block Copolymers Containing Liquid Crystalline Segments 

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