This review introduces research work in the area of organic liquid crystalline (LC) electrolytes consisting of ionophilic and ionophobic groups. I discuss the LC phase behavior and morphology-dependent ion conduction of organic electrolyte systems based upon (i) coil–coil block copolymers (BCP), (ii) dendritic BCPs, (iii) mini-dendron-based liquid crystals, and (iv) rod-type liquid crystals. As a way to improve ionic conductivity and mechanical strength, the self-assembling approach of each LC system and other processes including macroscopic alignment techniques and post-polymerizations are described.

In this work, antioxidant hydrogels were prepared by the construction of an interpenetrating chitosan network and functionalization with gallic acid. The poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) p(HEMA)-based hydrogels were first synthesized and subsequently surface-modified with an interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) structure prepared with methacrylamide chitosan via free radical polymerization. The resulting chitosan-IPN hydrogels were surface-functionalized with gallic acid through an amide coupling reaction, which afforded the antioxidant hydrogels. Notably, gallic-acid-modified hydrogels based on a longer chitosan backbone exhibited superior antioxidant activity than their counterpart with a shorter chitosan moiety; this correlated to the amount of gallic acid attached to the chitosan backbone. Moreover, the surface contact angles of the chitosan-modified hydrogels decreased, indicating that surface functionalization of the hydrogels with chitosan-IPN increased the wettability because of the presence of the hydrophilic chitosan network chain. Our study indicates that chitosan-IPN hydrogels may facilitate the development of applications in biomedical devices and ophthalmic materials.

We prepared two Janus dendrimers 1 and 2 bearing a hydrophobic Percec-type minidendron (i.e., 3,4,5-tridodecyloxybenzyl group) and hydrophilic aliphatic ether dendrons with different degrees of branching via stepwise click reactions. The obtained Janus dendrimers have the same hydrophilic volume fraction (f = 0.34), but a different number of hydrophilic chains, i.e., tetrabranched and dibranched oligo(ethylene oxide) coils for 1 and 2, respectively. Upon doping with lithium salt, liquid crystalline (LC) ionic samples 1-Li⁺++ and 2-Li⁺+ were obtained. As characterized by polarized optical microscopy (POM) and X-ray scattering techniques, 1-Li⁺++ showed an optically isotropic cubic LC phase, while 2-Li⁺+ displayed a birefringent hexagonal columnar LC structure with a bilayered cross-section. Interestingly, the conductivity values of the cubic phase were considerably higher than those of the columnar phase, with which the cubic phase could be assigned as a bicontinuous cubic structure rather than a micellar one. On the basis of the experimental observations, the morphological contrast between two ionic Janus dendrimers is strongly attributed to the degree of chain branching, which is one of the major parameters governing the morphological features in the Janus dendrimer assemblies.