The frozen state in the liquid phase of side-chain liquid-crystal polymers

Quenched isotropic melts of side-chain liquid-crystal polymers reveal surprisingly an anisotropic polymer conformation. This small-angle neutron-scattering (SANS) result is consistent with the identification of a macroscopic, solidlike response in the isotropic phase. Both experiments (rheology and SANS) indicate that the polymer system appears frozen on millimeter length scales and at the time scales of the observation. This result implies that the flow behavior is not the terminal behavior and that cross-links or entanglements are not a necessary condition to provide elasticity in melts.