A rod-spring model for main-chain liquid crystalline polymers containing hairpins

Abstract

Main-chain liquid crystalline polymers (LCPs) are used to produce strong ¿bers due to their ability to form highly-ordered orientational states. For su¿ciently long chains it is known that loss of entropy in such highly-ordered states is partly recovered by the formation of so-called hairpins or kinks. The presence of hairpins not only modi¿es the microstructure of LCPs, but it has also been conjectured that hairpins in¿uence their macroscopic mechanical behavior. In this paper the in¿uence of hairpins on the rheological properties of concentrated solutions of LCPs is studied