Conformational Study of Liquid Crystalline Polymer: Theoretical Studies

The relaxed torsional potential of a liquid crystalline polymer containing an ester functional group in a mesogenic unit (hereafter 12-4 oligomer) has been calculated with the ab initio self-consistent-field using 6-31G$^*$ basis set. GIAO^{13}C NMR chemical shifts also have been calculated at the B3LYP/6-31G$^*$ level of theory for each conformational structure obtained from torsional potential calculation. The results show that the phenyl ring-ester linkages are coplanar with the dihedral angle of about 0$^{\circ}$ and the ring-ring linkages in the biphenyl groups are tilted with the dihedral angle of around 43-44$^{\circ}$ in the lowest energy conformer. The biphenyl ring has a comparatively lower energy barrier of internal rotation potential in the ring-ring than that of phenyl ring-ester. The ^{13}C chemical shifts of carbonyl carbons were found to move to upfield due to $\pi$ -conjugation with phenyl ring and slightly affected about 0.5 ppm by dihedral angle of the ring-ring linkage.