THEORY OF POLYMER BRUSHES OF LIQUID-CRYSTALLINE POLYMERS

Liquid crystalline ordering in polymer brushes formed by macromolecule s with mesogenic groups in the main chain and immersed in a solvent is investigated theoretically by numerical calculations within a self-co nsistent field approximation. Existence of a microphase-segregated bru sh regime with a collapsed orientationally ordered intrinsic sublayer and a swollen external sublayer is shown. At high grafting density (si gma), the transition from a conventional brush state to the microphase -segregated state is continuous. At small sigma, it is a jumpwise firs t-order phase transition for a finite chain length (N), the magnitudes of the jumps in the average characteristics of the brush tend to zero in the limit N --> infinity.