Liquid crystals side-chain packing

Assume a side chain liquid crystal polymer, consisting of a flexible backbone and mesogenic side groups, is able to form the Sc phase and its glass transition is below the ambient temperature, such a side chain liquid crystal polymer will be expected to show ferroelectricity. The side groups are packed in a way similar to small molecular mass ferroelectric liquid crystals. The backbone is suppressed between layers, occasionally penetrating into them. The conformation of the backbone is discus-like. 

The special restriction caused by tying low molecular mass liquid crystalline substances to a polymer chain was also illustrated with amphiphilic liquid crystals. A hexagonally close-packed structure of rod-like micelle cylinders of sodium 10-undecenoate with about 50% water lost during polyma-ization at 60 °C its structure and became isotropic. On cooling, a lamellar liquid crystalline structure, more suitable to accommodate the macromolecular backbone was found. Bas l on the discussions of Sect. 5.3.4 it is likely that with longer side-chain amphiphiles condis crystals could be grown in analogy to the soaps described in Sect. 5.2.3... 

A discontinuity in the thermodynamic properties and phase behaviour of the cholesteryl n-alkanoates between Cg and Cg is matched by a distinct difference between the crystal structures of the octanoate and nonanoate. The nonanoate chains pack with cholesteryl ring systems rather than with each other, the molecules lying antiparallel. The decanoate, undecanoate, and laurate (dodecanoate) show very similar crystal structures to the nonanoate. X-Ray data are also reported for a series of polymerizable liquid-crystalline cholesteryl esters,and for petrosterol p-bromobenzoate, which is shown to have the structure (5), and not the side-chain (6) as reported in 1978. 

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