Abstract
In this paper, mesogenic polyelectrolyte gels (MPEgels) tethering mesogenic groups on the side chains were synthesized from a mesogenic monomer and ionic monomer via a conventional radical polymerization process. The obtained MPEgels absorbed various organic solvents in a wide range of dielectric constants from chloroform (ε = 7.6) to DMSO (ε = 46.5). The electrostatic repulsion among the polymer chains and the osmotic pressure between the interior and exterior of the MPEgel is responsible for the high swelling ability, revealed by the common ion effect using tetra(n-hexyl)ammonium tetra(3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)phenylborate (THATFPB). The obtained MPEgels could also absorb liquid crystalline molecules such as 4-cyano-4’-pentylbiphenyl (5CB), analogously caused by the above-mentioned polyelectrolyte characteristic. The MPEgels exhibited liquid crystal transition temperature (TNI) on differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement, and the increase of the ionic group content lowered TNI. The MPEgels absorbing liquid crystalline molecules exhibited differing TNI, dependent on the compatibility of the mesogenic group on the side chain to the liquid crystalline molecule.
Highlights
Polyelectrolytes are defined as polymers possessing dissociable ionic groups on their main or side chains; they release small ions into the solution, leaving a charged polymer chain [1,2,3,4,5]
As an unexplored solvent for polyelectrolyte gels, in this research, we focused on liquid crystalline molecules
8, 148 of 9 monomer initiated by benzoyl peroxide (BPO), using 1,6-hexanediol diacrylate (HDA) as4 the crosslinker (Scheme 2)
Summary
Polyelectrolytes are defined as polymers possessing dissociable ionic groups on their main or side chains; they release small ions into the solution, leaving a charged polymer chain [1,2,3,4,5]. The polymer chain exhibits an extended form driven by electrostatic repulsion among the charges on the chains. This feature provides various fascinating properties to polyelectrolytes, such as large viscosity, ion exchangeability, ion conductivity, or osmotic pressure, and they have found many applications including fuel cells [6,7,8,9,10], super absorbent polymers [11,12,13,14,15,16,17], or layer-by-layer membranes [18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. We prepared mesogenic polyelectrolyte gels tethering mesogenic groups and ionic groups via a conventional radical polymerization process, and investigated their swelling and orientating properties
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