Playing with Liquid Crystals: A Short Review

Dual frequency liquid crystals: a review

Topology with Liquid Crystals

With lasers or electron beams, it is now possible to mold a variety of soft and hard materials into different shapes with new properties and functionalities. These techniques also provide some of the few ways to generate topological shapes from mathematics, like knots and vortices, in a real-world system. In Physical Review Letters, Bryan Gin-ge Chen of the University of Pennsylvania (now at Le...

Photoalignment of liquid crystals by liquid crystals

We observed light-induced alignment of the nematic liquid crystal, 4, 4(')-n-pentylcyanobiphenyl (5CB), on a fused quartz. Irradiation of the adsorbed layer with polarized ultraviolet light produced homogeneous alignment in a 5CB-filled liquid crystal cell with the easy orientation axis perpendicular to the polarization direction. The measured anchoring energy increases with illumination up to ...

A Review of Polymer-Stabilized Ferroelectric Liquid Crystals

The polymer stabilized state of ferroelectric liquid crystals (FLC) is reviewed; and the effect of a dispersed polymer network in an FLC outlined and discussed. All fundamental material aspects are demonstrated; such as director tilt angle; spontaneous polarization; response time and viscosity; as well as the dielectric modes. It was found that the data can largely be explained by assuming an e...

Liquid Crystals as Novel Vesicular Delivery System: a Review

Recently, liquid crystals (LCs) studied as novel drug delivery system. The reason for this interest is due to the extensive similarity of these colloidal systems to those in living organism and their superior advantageous properties over traditional dermal, parenteral and oral dosage forms. LCs show structural, mechanical, and optical properties intermediate to those of crystalline solids and i...