Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS March Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 21–25, 2011; Dallas, Texas
Abstract: S1.00044 : Domain Structure Formation in Swollen Side-Chain Liquid Crystal Elastomers
Author:
Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are soft materials consisting of a
crosslinked polymer network that incorporates mesogenic groups, allowing for
orientational order in a solid rubber. Maintaining uniaxial strain on a
swollen nematic polymer gel will fix the direction of average orientation of
mesogens along the strain axis, yielding a monodomain LCE. Failure to strain
the swollen gel within $\sim $30 minutes of formation will produce an opaque
polydomain LCE that possesses no long-range nematic order unless stretched.
Polarized laser light scattering has been previously employed to monitor the
size of liquid crystal domains in fully-formed LCEs; however, no studies
have focused on the initial stages of domain formation. We have recorded the
time evolution of the far-field scattering patterns produced by swollen
polymer gels under varying levels of applied strain. These scattering
patterns provide dynamical information of domain behavior during synthesis
and processing of monodomain and polydomain LCEs.
To cite this abstract, use the following reference: http://meetings.aps.org/link/BAPS.2011.MAR.S1.44
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