Fluorescent ferroelectric liquid crystalline copolyacrylates

Abstract

Fluorescent liquid crystalline side chain polymers were synthesized by copolymerization of a ferroelectric monomer and 5 per cent of various blue fluorescent naphthalic imide dye comonomers. Those copolymers were characterized by DSC, X-ray, GPC and optical microscopy. In favourable cases, fast switching fluorescent ferroelectric polymers resulted, exhibiting high tilt angles (up to ∼ 34°) and spontaneous polarization values (up to ∼ 115 nC cm⁻²) in the S*_c phase. One fluorescent copolymer shows orthogonal smectic phases exclusively due to the structure of the incorporated fluorescent comonomer. In this case a strong electroclinic effect and high induced tilt angles (12° 10 V μm⁻¹) have been observed in the S_a phase. Order parameters, S, of the dye moieties up to 0.64 were measured in the room temperature S_b phase for the copolymers