Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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CPP: Fachverband Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik

CPP 59: Crystallization

CPP 59.2: Talk

Friday, March 13, 2026, 11:45–12:00, ZEU/0260

Influence of Composition on Sanidic Liquid Crystalline Mesophases in Statistical Copolythiophenes — •Alexander Much¹, Jakob Danziger¹, Qian Wang², Michael Sommer², and Oleksandr Dolynchuk¹ — ¹Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg — ²Technische Universität Chemnitz

Liquid-crystalline (LC) materials exhibit a variety of structural forms depending on the degree of order, allowing for the novel combination of their anisotropic properties. Board-like conjugated polymers with stiff backbones and short side chains, such as poly-(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT), are of particular interest because they exhibit weakly explored sanidic LC mesophases.

Here, we study the influence of chemical side-chain modification on the LC phase transitions in statistical copolymers poly-(3-hexylthiophene)-stat-poly-[3-(6-cyanohexyl)thiophene] using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and temperature-resolved wide angle X-ray scattering. We find that the copolythiophenes go trough a cascade of sanidic LC mesophases during heating, similar to those in P3HT. Remarkably, the temperature range where sanidic mesophases exists follows the melting range from DSC as a function of comonomer composition and increases towards the intermediate composition with an apparent minimum in values of melting temperature and enthalpy. This suggest that energetic contributions reduce the thermal stability of sanidic LC phases in copolythiophenes, and that LC transition temperatures can be tuned through statistical copolymerization without negating their existence.

Keywords: Polythiophenes; Semiconducting Polymers; Statistical Copolymers; P3HT; Liquid Crystal