Supramolecular Microphase Separation in a Hydrogen-Bonded Liquid Crystalline Comb Copolymer in the Melt State

Hydrogen bonding represents a versatile and convenient route to chemical diversity in natural and synthetic systems. It can be used to join various chemical species to one another to form products ranging from simple dimers to complex supramolecular moieties, some of which may be self-ordering.1,2 The use of hydrogen bonding to create liquid crystalline materials is an example of using molecular recognition to pursue prescribed molecular or supramolecular architectures for use in functional systems with self-assembled structures.3,4 Both low molecular weight and polymeric liquid crystals have been realized using hydrogen bonding, starting with the pioneering work of Kato and Frechet5 and continued by others in different systems.6-15 Ruokolainen et al. have used hydrogen bonding and charge transfer to complex aliphatic chains to homopolymers16-23 and block copolymers.24 Hydrogen bonding has also been used a