Homeotropic Alignment and Selective Adsorption of Nanoporous Polymer Film Polymerized from Hydrogen-bonded Liquid Crystal

Nanoporous polymer film with a hexagonal columnar (Colh) structure was fabricated by templated hydrogen-bonding discotic liquid crystals containing methacrylate functional group. The supramolecular hydrogen-bonded complex T3Ph-L is composed of a 1,3,5-tris(1H-benzo[d]imidazol-2-yl)benzene (T3Ph) core molecule as the hydrogen-bonding acceptor and 3,4,5-tris((11-(methacryloyloxy)undecyl)oxy)benzoic acid (L) peripheral molecules as donors. And the Colh structure is always retained after self-assembly, photo-crosslinking, and removal of the template T3Ph. The nanoporous polymer film can retain the Colh phase even under the dry condition, which indicates more possibilities for practical applications. After chemical modification of the inner wall of the nanopores, the nanoporous polymer film with pores of about 1 nm selectively adsorbs ionic dyes, and the adsorption process is spontaneous and exothermic in nature. Homeotropic alignment can be obtained when the blend complex was sandwiched between two modified glasses after annealing by slow cooling, which shows that the nanoporous polymer film has potential in applications such as nanofiltration.