Soft lithography fabricating micropatte rns of an azo-containing side-chain liquid crystalline polymer prepared by RAFT polymerization

A side-chain liquid crystalline polymer PCN2 was prepared by RAFT polymerization and characterized by UV-Vis, FTIR, H-NMR spectroscopies and GPC, DSC analyses, and three kinds of micropatterns of PCN2 were successfully fabricated by employing solvent-assisted micromolding (SAMIM) of the soft lithography techniques and were studied with optical microscopic and SEM investigations. The results show that the achieved PCN2 has a narrow molecular weight distribution of ca. 122, and that the micromolding method can produce fine micropatterns with a comparatively high fidelity, which are expected to be applied in the development of polymer materials with specific structures and functions.