Functional Lyotropic Liquid CrystalMaterials - Liquid Crystalline Functional Assemblies and Their Supramolecular Structures - page 191

within these phases presents some additional challenges. These difficulties
revolve around preserving the order of the surfactant molecules during poly-
merization. The enthalpic penalties associated with the polymer trying to stay
solvated within the surfactant, and the entropic penalties due to loss of con-
formational freedom within the confinement of the mesophase most often
result in phase separation [58]. In these cases the replica (polymer) does not
copy the template (LLC phase) perfectly, but interestingly the replica often
still possesses a degree of order [59-64]. Instead of nanometer-sized features,
however, they are often orders of magnitude larger. In one example, AOT is
used to form the H II and L phases [61]. Polymerization of styrene and di-
vinylbenzene is carried out in the hydrophobic domains. In the case of the H II
phase, strings of polymer beads ∼ 100 nm in diameter resulted after the re-

Fig. 10 a PLM image of thiophene conducting polymer after template is removed
(scale bar = 100 µ m). b Methodology for creating polymer “molecular wires”. Repro-
duced with permission from [69]. © 2003 by Wiley-VCH