Functional polythiiranes - 8. Influence of the terminal group on the thermotropic behaviour of side chain liquid crystalline polythiiranes and identification of a crystalline phase

Three new side chain liquid crystalline polythiiranes were prepared with new substituants on the mesogenic groups. Their thermotropic liquid crystalline behaviour was studied by the usual techniques (DSC, X-ray diffraction and polarized optical microscopy). Unlike the polyoxiranes described in the literature, the size of the terminal group has no influence on the nature of the mesophases of polythiiranes; only slight changes of the transition temperatures were observed. In this series of polymers, a phase, denoted X, appeared at temperatures below the smectic E phase, and could not be identified by usual characterization techniques. An isothermal kinetic study for the smectic E / X phase transition resulted in an Avrami exponent close to 1, suggesting a one-dimensional ordering occurred during the transformation from the smectic phase. This result, combined with other observations, helped us to assign the X phase to the crystalline phase.