Stiff chain persistence lengths in liquid crystalline copolyesters

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Abstract
This paper describes a continuation of our X‐ray diffraction work on the structure of the mesomorphic copolyesters prepared from p‐hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA) and 2‐hydroxy‐6‐naphthoic acid (HNA). The X‐ray patterns of meltspun fibers of these copolymers show a series of aperiodic meridional maxima, and these are predicted by a model consisting of stiff extended chains of completely random copolymer sequence. The calculated intensity data are independent of the chain length for the model, except that the width of the peak at d≃2.1Å decreases with increasing chain length. For 58/42 copoly(HBA/HNA) the best agreement obtained is for a chain length of 11 monomers, and this corresponds to a correlation or persistence length for the stiff chain conformation in the solid state. This effect has been modeled for an infinite chain by deriving experimental monomer length distribution functions, from a survey of the conformations of models of typical random chain sequences. The distribution function is then incorporated into the intensity calculations and leads to prediction of peak widths that are comparable to those observed.
Funding Information
  • N.S.F. (DMR84-17525)