Synthesis of Liquid Crystalline Copolyurethanes Containing Imide Unit

We have been studying :he synthesis of thermotropic polyurethanes, based on structural modifications by means of (i) the introduction of bulky substituent group in the aromatic ring to decrease the degree of lateral packing, (ii) the copolymerization of two kinds of monomers having different alkylene lengths to lower the regularity of the polymer structure, and (iii) the use of nonlinear monomers to lower the persistence length of the polymer chain in the liquid crystalline phase and to decrease the lateral interactions in the solid state. (omitted)