Nature of the liquid-crystalline phase in supramolecular linear polymers

The development of the liquid crystal (LC) state in the melt of a supramolecular linear LC polymer based on a diacid and bipyridine base has been studied by IR spectroscopy and polarizing optical microscopy. Relying on experiments on the hydrogen-bonded complex formation and statistical analysis of the formation kinetics of the nematic phase, it is inferred that the system under study behaves like a binary mixture of weakly interacting components rather than a polydisperse polymer.