The story of liquid crystals is that of transgression of frontiers and of breaking of common beliefs.
Indeed, liquid crystals were discovered by a biochemist, Friedrich Reinitzer, who shared his perplexity with a physicist, Otto Lehmann. Subsequently, crystallographers, mineralogists, experts in optics, magnetism, thermodynamics, chemists and others contributed together in recognition of liquid crystals as new states of matter, called by George Friedel mesophases, endowed with structures intermediate between those of isotropic liquids and crystals.
In this collective book, realised under an initiative of Françoise Brochard-Wyart – head of the field Physics of Soft Matter at ISTE Editions*, new borders are crossed several times. The title « Liquid crystals – New Perspectives» announces that when borders are crossed, new unknown perspectives are opened. This book explores the interaction of light with mesophases, the control of micro-particles with liquid crystals and the recent progress in the understanding of thermomechanical and thermohydrodynamical effects in cholesterics and deformed nematics. It then studies the physics of the dowser texture, which has remarkable properties. Finally, this book deals with the spontaneous emergence of chirality in nematics made of achiral molecules, and provides a brief historical context of chirality. Contents of the five chapters of this book are presented by means of video abstract on the WEB page: https://sites.google.com/view/lc-np/home.
*https://www.istegroup.com/en/domain/physique-de-la-matiere-molle/
Reference
Liquid Crystals – New Perspectives
Pawel Pieranski & Maria Helena Godinho
Wiley-ISTE (2021)
Contact
Pawel Pieranski