Polymer applications erasable materials

Development of new liquid crystalline (LC) polymeric materials has been a subject of intense interest because of the combination of unusual optical, electrical, and magnetic properties of low-molecular-weight liquid crystals and the mechanical performance and processibility of polymers. Application areas of LC polymers are very diverse, from engineering plastics to LC displays and erasable compact disks. However, the development of conducting and liquid crystalline polymers went on separately in the past in spite of the similarity of the molecular structures of typical main-chain liquid crystals and some conductive polymers. 

Fulgides and related diarylethenes have been investigated extensively because of the long-term thermal stability of their photocyclized colored forms, which could lead to this application in erasable optical recording materials and photoswitchable optical elements. The entrapment of these photochromic molecules in polymer films is necessary for these practical applications. Picosecond laser photolysis was employed to study the electrocyclic reaction of a furylfulgide (18, Figure 8) in polymer solids and revealed that the colored structure was formed with a time constant of ca. lOps irrespective of the nature of the polymer matrix.49... 

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