Liquid crystal materials amphiphilic block-copolymers

The main state-of-the-art of presented work is based on development of new strategy of preparation of thermo-responsive materials in which, amphiphilic block copolymers are used as both a nanostructured agent for epoxy network and as a dispersing agent for low molecular liquid crystals. These novel materials can find application in the field of liquid crystals which possess nematic-isotropic transition and allow the designing of materials which can switch from the opaque... 

Liquid crystals combine properties of both liquids (fluidity) and crystals (long range order in one, two, or three dimensions). Examples of liquid crystalline templates formed by amphiphiles are lyotropic mesophases, block copolymer mesophases, and polyelectrolyte-suxfactant complexes. Their morphological complexity enables the template synthesis of particles as well as of bulk materials with isotropic or anisotropic morphologies, depending on whether the polymerization is performed in a continuous or a discontinuous phase. As the templating of thermotropic liquid crystals is already described in other reviews [47] the focus here is the template synthesis of organic materials in lyotropic mesophases. 

The main aim of this work was the generation of novel smart materials, in this case thermo-responsive inorganic/organic meso/nanostructured hybrids based on different low molecular weight liquid crystals (LC) and conductive rutile Ti02 nanoparticles. LC as partially miscible with polystyrene (PS) was well-dispersed using amphiphilic poly(styrene-i-ethylene oxide) block copolymers (PS-b-PEO). Simultaneously, LC was used as surfactant for conductive rutile Ti02 nanoparticles. 

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