Advances in Nematic Liquid Crystals

A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Liquid Crystals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 8443

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Military University of Technology, Faculty of Advanced Technologies and Chemistry, Warsaw, Poland
Interests: liquid crystals; smectic liquid crystals; soft matter; liquid crystal composites; photonics; liqud crystals applications; laser beam shaping

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Advanced Materials and Chemistry, Military University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
Interests: synthesis of liquid crystals; highly birefringent nematics; nematic liquid crystals for IR; THz; GHz; chiral smectics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the field of soft matter self-organization studies the investigations of nematic liquid crystals have provided valuable contributions during the last several decades. Nowadays, this is still a very open field. Recent studies on nematic materials and structures are, not only highly relevant to the fundamental knowledge side, but are also a source of the design of advanced functional materials. The impact of new applications has recently shifted the interest from industrial manufacturing to understanding of structure–property relationships. This is increased by the availability of new unconventional nematogenic molecular structures, nematic materials exhibiting high optical birefringence, low viscosity, light-driven molecular conformations and good IR transparency. Recently an increasing interest in soft matter structures and their physical properties has been observed due to the continuous progress in material engineering of bend-core nematics forming twist-bend and biaxial phases. Moreover, the new era of nematic-based materials research began with the advent of research exploring composite nematics doped with functional nanoparticles, graphene and graphene oxide particles, dyes, fluorescent compounds, polymers, and others. This Special Issue will collect selected contributions shining light on current studies of nematic phase based materials, indicating new paths for soft matter engineering.

Dr. Wiktor Piecek
Dr. Przemysław Kula
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Structure–property relationships in nematic phase
  • New nematogenic species
  • Nematics for out of visible applications (NIR, IR, THz, GHz)
  • High birefringence nematic liquid crystals
  • Twist-bend nematogens
  • Bend-core nematics and biaxial nematic phases
  • Dual frequency driven nematic
  • Nanoparticle doped nematic phase
  • Polymer dispersed nematic liquid crystals
  • Confined structures of nematic liquid crystals
  • Chiral dopants and chiral nematic materials

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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18 pages, 2099 KiB  
Article
Wetting of Nematic Liquid Crystals on Crenellated Substrates: A Frank–Oseen Approach
by Óscar A. Rojas-Gómez, Margarida M. Telo da Gama and José M. Romero-Enrique
Crystals 2019, 9(8), 430; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst9080430 - 19 Aug 2019
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3074
Abstract
We revisit the wetting of nematic liquid crystals in contact with crenellated substrates, studied previously using the Landau–de Gennes formalism. However, due to computational limitations, the characteristic length scales of the substrate relief considered in that study limited to less than 100 nematic [...] Read more.
We revisit the wetting of nematic liquid crystals in contact with crenellated substrates, studied previously using the Landau–de Gennes formalism. However, due to computational limitations, the characteristic length scales of the substrate relief considered in that study limited to less than 100 nematic correlation lengths. The current work uses an extended Frank–Oseen formalism, which includes not only the free-energy contribution due to the elastic deformations but also the surface tension contributions and, if disclinations or other orientational field singularities are present, their core contributions. Within this framework, which was successfully applied to the anchoring transitions of a nematic liquid crystal in contact with structured substrates, we extended the study to much larger length scales including the macroscopic scale. In particular, we analyzed the interfacial states and the transitions between them at the nematic–isotropic coexistence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Nematic Liquid Crystals)
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8 pages, 1508 KiB  
Article
Electro-Optical Switching of Dual-Frequency Nematic Liquid Crystals: Regimes of Thin and Thick Cells
by Olha Melnyk, Yuriy Garbovskiy, Dario Bueno-Baques and Anatoliy Glushchenko
Crystals 2019, 9(6), 314; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst9060314 - 18 Jun 2019
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4905
Abstract
Conventional display applications of liquid crystals utilize thin layers of mesogenic materials, typically less than 10 µm. However, emerging non-display applications will require thicker, i.e., greater than 100 µm, layers of liquid crystals. Although electro-optical performance of relatively thin liquid crystal cells is [...] Read more.
Conventional display applications of liquid crystals utilize thin layers of mesogenic materials, typically less than 10 µm. However, emerging non-display applications will require thicker, i.e., greater than 100 µm, layers of liquid crystals. Although electro-optical performance of relatively thin liquid crystal cells is well-documented, little is known about the properties of thicker liquid crystal layers. In this paper, the electro-optical response of dual-frequency nematic liquid crystals is studied using a broad range (2–200 µm) of the cell thickness. Two regimes of electro-optical switching of dual-frequency nematics are observed and analyzed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Nematic Liquid Crystals)
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