Liquid Crystals

Liquid Crystals provides information pertinent to the characterization and understanding of the liquid crystalline or ordered fluid. This book presents the important developments in the understanding of liquid crystals.

Organized into seven chapters, this book begins with an overview of the various relations between liquid crystals and polymers. This text then examines the synthesis of very simple families of liquid crystals of the types required by the laboratory physicists. Other chapters consider the process of reorientation of the permanent dipole moments connected with changes in the field, which requires a definite time interval. This book discusses as well the lyotropic liquid crystals that can be formed by amphiphilic molecules as different as lipids and copolymers. The final chapter deals with the aspect of molecular pattern, which seems to be the most underestimated in the consideration of biological phenomena found in liquid crystal.

This book is a valuable resource for scientists, physicists, and chemists.

Supplements

Contributors to Supplement 14

Preface

Macromolecules and Liquid Crystals: Reflections on Certain Lines of Research

I. Introduction

II. Sheet Structures of AB Copolymers

III. Dilute Micelles of AB Copolymers

IV. One Ideal Chain in a Layered System

V. A Real Chain in a Layered System

VI. Conclusions

Liquid-Crystal Synthesis for Physicists

I. Introduction

II. A General Presentation

III. Schiff's Bases

IV. p-p'-Disubstituted Azoxybenzene

V. Esters

VI. Purification

VII. Conclusion

Elasticity of Nematic Liquid Crystals

I. Introduction

II. Freedericksz Transition in Nematics

III. Flexo-electric Effects

IV. Observation of Distortion and Determination of Material Constants

V. Dynamics of the Freedericksz Transition

The Dielectric Permittivity of Liquid Crystals

I. Introduction

II. The Static Permittivity of Nematic Liquid Crystals

III. Permittivity and Molecular Structure

IV. The Influence of Smectic Order on the Static Permittivity

V. Dynamic Behavior of the Permittivity

Instabilities in Nematic Liquid Crystals

I. Introduction

II. Linear Hydrodynamics of Isotropic and Nematic Liquids

III. Benard-Rayleigh Thermal Convection in Isotropic Fluids

IV. Thermal Convection in Nematics

V. Hydrodynamic Instabilities in Nematics

VI. Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) Instabilities in Nematics

Appendix: Analog Simulation of Linear Instabilities

Lyotropic Liquid Crystals: Structures and Molecular Motions

I. Introduction

II. Structural Polymorphism

III. Local Behavior of Lipids

IV. Final Comment

Liquid Crystals and Their Analogs in Biological Systems

I. Introduction

II. Historical Summary

III. Smectics and Related Systems in Cells and Tissues

IV. Nematics, Cholesterics and Their Analogs

V. Mesomorphism and Morphogenesis

VI. Conclusions

Author Index

Subject Index