A brief introduction of liquid crystals and their phases is provided in this paper. Liquid crystal is a state of matter which has intermediate prosperities between liquid and crystalline solid. Its phases are characterized by their space and point group symmetry. We'll give a description of the symmetry and characteristics of different phase types of liquid crystals. And then talk about their p...

Electromechanical materials are very useful as actuators when small weight, and low to moderate force are needed to manipulate small objects. The Liquid Crystal Material Research center located in Boulder, Colorado in interested in developing a novel liquid crystal based electromechanical elastomer. De Vries liquid crystals organize into layers where the director is perpendicular to the layer n...

The recently developed inelastic X-ray scattering technique opens a new kinematic region at the observation of molecular liquids vibrational dynamics over the length scales of the interparticle separation. We illustrate the capabilities of this powerful technique through the results obtained from liquid glycerol. A detailed analysis of the high-frequency vibrational dynamics of this system at a...

Several liters of an organic liquid scintillator (LS) loaded with Nd have been made. We report on performances of this scintillator in terms of optical properties, radiopurity and light yield for a Nd concentration of 6.5 g/l. A possible application to search for the Nd neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay with a 10-ton scale LS detector is discussed together with further improvements.

Photoalignment possesses obvious advantages in comparison with the usually “rubbing” treatment of the substrates of liquid crystal display (LCD) cells. The liquid crystal photoalignment is nano-technology, as the thickness of the alignment layer is about 2-15 nm. The application of the photo-alignment and photo-patterning nano technology for the new generation of photonic and display devices wi...

A new point-diffraction interferometer has been developed with a liquid-crystal filter that permits arbitrary phase shifts to be introduced between the object and reference beams. A microsphere embedded within the liquid-crystal layer provides a locally generated reference beam. We phase shift the object beam by varying a voltage across the liquid crystals, thereby altering the refractive index...

A key liquid crystalline property for electro-optic applications is the Frederiks threshold electric field. There has been recent experimental interest in liquid crystal-based colloidal suspensions in which the colloidal nanoparticles both possess a permanent electric polarization and provide strong director anchoring on the particle surface. Such suspensions are sometimes known as Filled Liqui...