Description Thermotropic liquid-crystalline polymer

The connection between liquid crystallinity (mesomorphism) and polymers can arguably be dated from 1950 with Elliott and Ambrose s description of birefringent chloroform solutions of the synthetic polypeptide polyCybenzyl-L-glutamate). Robinson s reports, begun in 19562, on careful studies of such solutions, firmly established the phenomenon of lyotropic (solvent induced) liquid crystallinity in polymers. In the 1960 s industrial research into what later proved to be thermotropic liquid crystalline polymers - linear para-substituted aromatic polyesters - was actively pursued. The now famous discovery in 1965 by Kwolek at du Pont of lyotropic liquid crystallinity in aromatic polyamides led to the highly successful Kevlar materials. 

The unique physical and chemical properties of liquid crystalline polymers make them attractive to chemists, physicists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and chemical engineers. We have limited ourselves here to a description of thermotropic liquid crystals—those prepared by heating certain polymers. 

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