Issue 22, 2020

Epoxide and oxetane based liquid crystals for advanced functional materials

Abstract

Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) and liquid crystalline networks (LCNs) are classes of polymers very suitable for fabricating advanced functional materials. Two main pathways to obtain LCEs and LCNs have gained the most attention in the literature, namely the two-step crosslinking of LC side-chain polymers and the photoinitiated free-radical polymerisation of acrylate LC monomers. These liquid crystal polymers have demonstrated remarkable properties resulting from their anisotropic shapes, being used in soft robotics, responsive surfaces and as photonic materials. In this review, we will show that LCs with cyclic ethers as polymerisable groups can be an attractive alternative to the aforementioned reactive acrylate mesogens. These epoxide and oxetane based reactive mesogens could offer a number of advantages over their acrylate-based counterparts, including oxygen insensitivity, reduced polymerisation shrinkage, improved alignment, lower processing viscosity and potentially extended resistivity. In this review, we summarise the research on these materials from the past 30 years and offer a glimpse into the potential of these cyclic ether mesogens.

Graphical abstract: Epoxide and oxetane based liquid crystals for advanced functional materials

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
20 Mar 2020
Accepted
17 May 2020
First published
21 May 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Soft Matter, 2020,16, 5106-5119

Epoxide and oxetane based liquid crystals for advanced functional materials

D. C. Hoekstra, A. P. H. J. Schenning and M. G. Debije, Soft Matter, 2020, 16, 5106 DOI: 10.1039/D0SM00489H

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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