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Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4558–4561 (1999)

Double Twist in Helical Polymer “Soft” Crystals

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Christopher Y. Li, Stephen Z. D. Cheng*, Jason J. Ge, Feng Bai, John Z. Zhang, Ian K. Mann, and Frank W. Harris
The Maurice Morton Institute and Department of Polymer Science, The University of Akron, Akron, Ohio 44325-3909

Lang-Chy Chien
Liquid Crystal Institute, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44010-0001

Donghang Yan and Tianbai He
Polymer Physics Laboratory, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China

Bernard Lotz
Institute Charles Sadron, 6 Rue Boussingault, Strasbourg 67083, France

Received 12 July 1999; published in the issue dated 29 November 1999

See accompanying Physics Focus

In natural and synthetic materials having non-racemic chiral centers, chirality and structural ordering each play a distinct role in the formation of ordered states. Configurational chirality can be extended to morphological chirality when the phase structures possess low liquid crystalline order. In the crystalline states the crystallization process suppresses the chiral helical morphology due to strong ordering interactions. In this Letter, we report the first observation of helical single lamellar crystals of synthetic non-racemic chiral polymers. Experimental evidence shows that the molecular chains twist along both the long and short axes of the helical lamellar crystals, which is the first time a double-twist molecular orientation in a helical crystal has been observed.

© 1999 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.4558
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.4558
PACS:
61.41.+e

*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email address: cheng@polymer.uakron.edu

 
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