Liquid crystals (LCs) are versatile materials that have found widespread applications in display technologies and more recently in various detection systems especially in biological fields. LCs possess order and mobility; the presence and utilization of which is a key component of systems that make use of these materials. Traditional LCs can be classified as either being thermotropic LCs where a phase change is affected by a change in temperature or lyotropic LCs where a phase change is dependent on both a change in temperature and dependent upon the solvent and often times concentration in which they are dissolved. This classification alone throws the different LCs into a multitude of different applications especially when solubility in various solvents is a key factor to be considered.<br/><br/>Whereas LCs can be designed as polymers or small organic molecules, efforts are made to exploit their unique properties by either solubilizing them in organic solvents or in aqueous solvents with the aim of getting those unique properties to manifest themselves. This is achieved in many ways such as having functional groups with a propensity to dissolve in aqueous solvents such as carboxylic acids or their carboxylate versions. Where polymers are preferred to small molecules , the small molecules are designed in a way that can allow ring opening polymerization metathesis (ROMP) to be used as the method of choice for polymerization primarily due to its versatility in better control of molecular weight (low PDI values).<br/><br/>We have demonstrated in the past how to harness various properties ranging from order, degree of mobility and ease of producing well aligned materials by using polymers having LC units such as cyanobiphenyl that can be magnetically or electrically aligned. The phases morphology resulting from these materials makes them good candidates for nanotemplating or nanoporous polymers that can easily find applications in photovoltaics, photonics, catalysis, sensing and as precursors for nanoporous materials. While this is just a part of wider scope of applications, there’s a good reason to believe that our quest to have materials than can be used as thermotropic LCs and lyotropic LCs or both is achievable.

Harnessing properties of thermotropic and lyotropic liquid crystalline polymers and molecules soluble in both aqueous and organic solvents

2019 Spring National Meeting

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