A Simple Statistical-Thermodynamical Model for Liquid-Crystalline Polymers with Repeating Units Comprising a Rigid and a Flexible Part

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Abstract
A statistical-thermodynamical model of liquid crystalline polymers in which the repetitive units comprise a rigid and a flexible part is presented. Features of the model are: (i) the steric contribution to the entropy is evaluated according to Di Marzio, and (ii) the conformational contribution is obtained through a simple matrix multiplication scheme allowing its evaluation as a function of the order parameter, temperature, length of the flexible and of the rigid paris. The trends experimentally observed for various polymers are correctly reproduced. The results of various sample calculations will be shown.