Exploratory Syntheses of Polymers Possessing Electrically Conducting, Liquid Crystalline, Piezoelectric, and Nonlinear Optical Activity

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Abstract
Studies of the synthesis of organic polymers potentially possessing electrically conductive, piezoelectric, and nonlinear optical properties are described. The electrically conducting polymer studies center on polyaromatic quinondiimines, analogs of the known conducting polymer polyaniline. Various polycondensation polymers based on anthraquinone and on heterocyclic quinones were examined. Multiazoarylene polymers were also synthesized by oxidative coupling of aromatic diamines. Their fidms were found to be n-dopable but were not very conductive. Polyesters and polyformals containing multiazoarylene units also were not highly conductive. Liquid crystal properties were observed for multiazobisphenol sebacate polyesters. Toward piezoactive polymers, a polyvinylidene fluoride macromonomer was synthesized via telomerization of vinylidene fluoride with methanol. Films of poly(bicyclobutane-1-carbonitrile) were found to show piezoactivity. 2-Ethyl-2-butylmalonimide was synthesized and subjected to ring-opening polymerization with the aim of synthesizing novel piezoactive β-pleated sheet polymalonimides. As to NLO polymers, AB polyesters (up to 20-fold increases) could be attained by incorporating the nonlinear optical chromophores into a polar main-chain polymer. This effect is the manifestation of overall increases in the field-induced molecular alignment through cooperative effects of the separate molecular dipoles. While investigations on thin films of the same copolymers showed that the poled molecular orientation could be frozen and maintained in the absence of the field, the degree of orientation in thin films was found to be much less than that in the solution, but considerably more than an uncorrelated assembly.