Thermal discotic network

Figure 22. Thermal expansion of discotic networks (a) LSCE (b) polydomain sample (reproduced with permission from [36]).

There are only two papers describing the physical properties of discotic LCEs [35, 36]. X-ray diffraction showed that a narrower azimuthal intensity distribution can be obtained when a second crosslinking step is done under an external load reflecting a macroscopic alignment parallel to the direction of the external stress [35]. X-ray diffraction experiments on monodomains (LSCE) show the occurrence of sharp maxima in the azimuthal distribution. Thermal expansion has also been studied for polydomain LCEs and for LSCEs in [36]. It is found that well inside the discotic phase, that is sufficiently far below the discotic-isotrop-ic transiton, the length parallel to the stress axis of both, poly- and monodomain samples, increases approximately linearly with increasing temperature as expected from the isobaric expansion of the network. 

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