Liquid crystalline polyamines containing side dendrons: Toward the building of ion channels based on polyamines

In this article, we modified poly[2-(aziridin-1-yl)ethanol] (PAZE) with the dendron 3,4,5-tris[4-(n-dodecan-1-yloxy)benzyloxy]benzoic acid, to obtain liquid crystalline columnar polyamines. The chemical modification reaction was first tuned on a model compound, N,N-dimethyl-2-hydroxyethylamine. The best results were obtained by the esterification method with N,Nʹ-dicyclohexylcarbodiimide at room temperature, in the presence of 4-dimethylaminopyridine. The obtained copolymers showed higher char yield than starting PAZE. In all cases they exhibited small crystalline portions after annealing and columnar mesophases, as inferred by DSC, XRD and POM. The dimension of the unit cell resulted slightly narrower than in the case of the copolyethers bearing the same dendron. This is probably due to the presence of a longer spacer in PAZE, which allows better accommodating of the side tapered group.