Self-assembly and UV-curing Property of Polymerized Lyotropic Liquid Crystal Monomer of Sodium 3,4,5-tris(11 acryloxyundecyloxy)benzoate

A polymerized lyotropic liquid crystal monomer of sodium 3,4,5-tris(11-acryloxyundecyloxy)-benzoate was synthesized by a convenient route starting from 3,4,5-trihydroxybenzoic acid via esterification followed by etherification, acylation and finally neutralization. The chemi-cal structure was confirmed by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectral analysis. The self-organization behavior of the monomer with deionized water in methanol at room temperature was also demonstrated. The assemblies were char-acterized by polarized optical microscope and X-ray diffraction. The results show that a solution containing 80:20 of the monomer to water was found to be able to self-organize into Lamellar (La) phase and 92:8 with inverted hexagonal (H_II) phase, which was in ac-cordance with the theoretical calculation of critical packing parameter. It suggests that the concentration of the monomer was the key factor to influence assembly structure. Addi-tionally, the acrylate conversion with different photoinitiators and nanostructure retention after polymerization were investigated. The research shows that the acrylate conversion of the monomer with Darocur2959 could reach up to 78% when irradiated by 30 mW/cm² UV light of 365 nm for 30 min characterized by Real-time FT-IR as well as the sol-gel method. Meanwhile, the La and H_II phase nanostructures were both retained after polymerization.