부산대학교 도서관

Recently our group showed that polysilane with a chiral side chain assumes one handed screw rigid-rod helical conformation, and it forms various liquid crystal phases, for example columnar phase, nematic phase cholesteric phase. In this study, we synthesized optically inactive polysilane, poly(n-decyl-(rac-2-methylbutyl)silane) by Wurtz coupling to study chiral propagation. We found that the polymer forms smecticB phase, smecticA phase, and nematic phase with Polarizing Optical Microscope (POM), Wide Angle X-ray Diffraction, and Synchrotron Radiation Small Angle X-ray Scattering. In POM observation, we observed optically Isotropic-Nematic phase transition upon heating. This is the first observation of isotropic-anisotropic transition in rigid-rod like polysilane.