liquidcrystal第一部分.pdfVIP

3) Liquid Crystals The molecules forming liquid- crystalline mesophases have nontrivial shapes: they are usually rod-like or occasionally disk-like. All of these molecular systems are isotropic liquids at high temperatures and are conventional, periodic solids at sufficiently low temperatures. A liquid crystal is a state of matter with properties intermediate between those of a conventional liquid and those of a crystalline solid. The most general definition is that a liquid crystal has has no long-ranged (translational) periodicity but possesses an orientational order. Liquid crystals: symmetries Liquid crystals occur in two basic categories: ● thermotropic – temperature-driven transitions ● lyotropic – phase determined also by concentration, solvent, and surfactants. Liquid-crystal molecules are usually organic. Some have electric and magnetic properties, and hence interact with light. Historically, the first liquid crystal to be identified (in 1888) was cholesterol. Many liquid crystals have been investigated for their spectacular optical properties. There are many different types of liquid- crystalline phase, depending on ● molecular shape (rod- or disk-shaped) ● degree of order (positional and orientational) retained. Liquid crystal types: nematic The simplest liquid crystal is the nematic phase: the rod-shaped (calamitic) molecules have no positional order, but self-align to give a long-ranged directional order with the long axes approximately parallel. The molecules flow freely and the center-of-mass positions have random distributions as in a liquid, but the long-range directional order is maintained. ● the ordering direction is characterized by a “vector,” the director, n. ● the structure is determined almost entirely by considerations of hard-packed classical ellipsoids. ● the orientational order parameter S = cos2θ – 1/3. Liquid