Porous organic materials have attracted scientific attention over the past few years due to widespread applications in catalysis, gas separation, removal of pollutants from waste water. These materials can be used as precursors for nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes. Liquid crystals (LCs) are versatile materials whose inherent properties like magnetic anisotropy can be tuned to solve challenging scientific and eventually industrial problems. When incorporated into a polymeric framework, LCPs possess order and mobility characteristic of polymers; the presence and utilization of which is a key component of systems that make use of these materials. Novel liquid crystalline brush-like block copolymers bearing norbornene backbone based block copolymers are designed as templates for nanomaterials and destined for functional nanomaterial applications. By harnessing the rich spectrum of structure/morphology properties and the wide selection of pendant side chains, these materials have promising applications as precursors for nanoporous materials, electro-optical materials for photovoltaics and photonics, catalysis and sensing. ROMP of norbornene based monomers results in better control of molecular weight of the polymers. By using cyanobiphenyl moiety, thermal, electrical and magnetic field alignment can be achieved while selective removal of PLA creates a platform for nanoporous materials. It is believed that the presence of etchable units within the polymer framework such as PLA and presence of magnetically or electrically anisotropic LC moieties will offer significant advantages for ease of pore generation and for easy control/alignment of pores for applications requiring highly uniform and well aligned pores. Careful selection of monomers and search for suitable morphologies will provide an excellent platform for next generation nanoporous polymeric materials.

Nanoporous liquid crystalline polymers: Utilizing magnetic anisotropy in designing functional materials

2019 Fall National Meeting

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