Photo-switchable liquid crystalline brush as an aligning surface for liquid crystals: modelling via mesoscopic computer simulations

Abstract

We consider the mesoscopic model for the liquid crystalline brush that might serve as a photoswitchable aligning surface for preorientation of low molecular weight liquid crystals in a bulk. The brush is built by grafting the polymer chains of a side-chain molecular architecture, with the side chains terminated by a chromophore unit mimicking the azobenzene unit, to a substrate. When irradiated with ultraviolet light, the chromophores photoisomerize into a non-mesogenic cis state and the whole system turns into an ordinary polymer brush with no orientational order and two states: the collapsed and straightened one, depending on the grafting density. When irradiated with visible light, the chromophores photoisomerize into a mesogenic trans state, resulting in formation of a transient network between chains because of a strong attraction between chromophores. Spontaneous self-assembly of the brush in these conditions results in an orientationally isotropic polydomain structure. The desired uniaxial planar ordering of chromophores within a brush can be achieved at certain temperature and grafting density intervals, as the result of a two-stage preparation protocol. An external stimulus orients chromophores uniaxially at the first stage. The system is equilibrated at the second stage at a given temperature and with the external stimulus switched off. The preoriented chromophores either keep or loose their orientations depending on the strength of the memory effect inherent to a transient network of chains that are formed during the first stage, similarly to the case of the liquid crystalline elastomers, where such effects are caused by the covalent crosslinks.