Syntheses and properties of thiophene- and pyrrole-based liquid crystalline small-bandgap conjugated polymers

We present syntheses and properties of thermotropic liquid crystalline conducting polymers with small-bandgaps. The polymers consist of benzenoid and quinonoid structures of polythiophene or polypyrrole backbone with liquid crystalline substituent, where phenylcyclohexyl moiety was adopted as a mesogenic core. Both kinds of polymers exhibited smectic liquid crystalline phases.