Abstract: The banded textures in the films of a thermotropic liquid crystalline poly(aryl ether ketone) containing a lateral chloro group have been studied by means of transmission electron microscopy(TEM), electron diffraction(ED) and atomic force microscopy(AFM). The crystallization induced banded texture without external shear can be formed when the thin films were annealed at the temperature range(320—330 ℃) of the liquid crystalline state from the melt. The results show that the banded regions have high orientation of single crystal based on the orthorhombic packing and the growing direction of the bands is along the b axis of the crystals. This kind of single crystal like bands is due to the different orientation of the packing molecular chains. The molecular chains of the dark bands in the bright field electron micrograph are perpendicular to the film plane, while the ones of the bright bands are tilt along the b axis with the tilt angle upto ±20°.

Key words: Poly(aryl ether ketone), Thermotropic liquid crystal, Single crystal-like banded texture