Liquid Crystalline Elastomers—Characterization as Networks

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Abstract
This paper summarises the properties of archiral and chiral liquid crystalline (LC) elastomers, the latter of which have found interest due to their piezoelectric properties. In addition the formation of new LC elastomers by a radical polymerization of acrylate groups covalently linked to LC polymers was investigated. This was done concerning the progress of the crosslinking reaction, concerning the influence of the crosslinking on the LC phases and concerning the network properties (swelling ratio and elastic modulus) of the resulting elastomers. It turns out that the networks prepared in this way are very soft and their crosslinking density is low. This can be explained assuming that the radical polymerization of the acrylates leads only to short oligomers, due to steric restrictions. Photo crosslinking initiated by a photoinitiator in the LC phase creates a memory of the orientation before crosslinking.