Rp. Hjelm et al., THE SOLUTION STRUCTURE OF LIQUID-CRYSTAL POLYMERS WITH SMALL LIQUID-CRYSTAL THERMOSET MALEIMIDES AND NADIMIDES, International journal of thermophysics, 16(2), 1995, pp. 309-317
The solution structure of the deuterated liquid-crystal polyamide poly
mer (LCP) poly(p-phenylene-2-nitroterephthalamide), alone and mixed wi
th small, rodlike, amide, liquid-crystal molecules (LCT) in N-methyl-2
-pyrrolidinone (NMP), is studied using small-angle neutron scattering.
Measurements were made as a function of LCP concentration using diffe
rent LCTs mixed at 20 and 40 wt% relative to LCP. Our motivation for s
tudying this system comes from a need to connect solution structure wi
th film morphology in processing these materials for high-performance
molecular composites. Our analysis shows that the LCP in NMP forms lar
ge domain-like structures. The presence of LCT breaks up the LCP domai
ns into smaller structures, some of which are filamentous LCP-LCT aggr
egates. This result suggests that the simple entropic description of t
he solution behavior of mixtures of long and short rods is not adequat
e in describing systems of this type.