High Out-of-Plane Alignment of Liquid Crystalline Methacrylate Copolymer Bearing Photoreactive 4-Styrylpyridine Moiety

This paper describes the out-of-plane order of a liquid crystalline(LC) methacrylate copolymer(3) comprised of a methacrylate(1) with a 4-styrylpyridine moiety as the photo-cyclodimerizable group and a benzoate moiety as the mesogenic group in the side chain, and another methacrylate(2) with a 4-(4-methoxyphenyl)benzoate moiety as the mesogenic group. The composition of 1 and 2 units in 3 was estimated to have a molar ratio of 54.2:45.8 by $^{1}H$ NMR spectroscopy. The X-ray diffraction study revealed that the copolymer forms a partial bilayer smectic structure. The copolymer gave rise to a high out-of-plane order parameter of about 0.74 in a wide LC temperature range of $110{\sim}160^{\circ}C$ after linearly polarized, UV light irradiation and subsequent annealing. Moreover, the external reflection IR analysis indicated that excess UV-light irradiation makes the out-of-plane LC structure of the copolymer appear in a higher and wider temperature range.