TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MOMBASA
MATERIAL SCIENCE
ASSIGNMENT 1
CALAMITIC LIQUID CRYSTALS(nematics and smetics)
ONESMUS WAMBUA MWENZWA
Msc/0014/19
LIQUID CRYSTALS
• It is an intermediate state of a matter, in between the liquid and the crystal.
• It must possess some typical properties of a liquid (e. g. fluidity, inability to
support shear, formation and coalescence of droplets) as well as some crystalline
properties (anisotropy in optical, electrical, and magnetic properties, periodic
arrangement of molecules in one spatial direction, etc.). Certain structural features
are often found in molecules forming liquid crystal phases, and they may be
summarized as follows:
• 1. The molecules have anisotropic shape (e. g. are elongated).
• Liquid crystallinity is more likely to occur if the molecules have flat segments, e. g.
benzene rings.
• 2. A fairly good rigid backbone containing double bonds defines the long axis of
the molecule.
• 3. The existence of strong dipoles and easily polarizable groups in the molecule
seems important.
CLASSIFICATION OF LIQUID CRYSTALS
ARRANGEMENT OF PARTICLES
NEMATICS
• The nematic phase is characterized by long-range
orientational order, i. e. the long axes of the molecules tend
to align along a preferred direction.
• The locally preferred direction may vary throughout the
medium, although in the unstrained nematic it does not.
• of the interesting phenomenology of liquid crystals involves
the geometry and dynamics of the preferred axis, which is
defined by a vector n(r) giving its local orientation.
• This vector is called a director.
NEMATICS
• Since its magnitude has no significance, it is taken to be unity.
• There is no long-range order in the positions of the centers of mass of the
molecules of a nematic, but a certain amount of short-range order may exist as
in ordinary liquids
• The molecules appear to be able to rotate about their long axes and also there
seems to be no preferential arrangement of the two ends of the molecules if
they differ. Hence the sign of the director is of no physical significance, n = −n.
• optically a nematic behaves as a uniaxial material with a center of symmetry. A
simplified picture of the relative arrangement of the molecules in the nematic
phase is shown in below. The long planar molecules are symbolized by ellipses.
Texture of nematics
NEMATIC TEXTURES
• After these textures the nematic phase was named, as “nematic” comes from the
Greek word for “thread”.
• . On optical examination of a nematic, one rarely sees the idealized equilibrium
configuration.
• . The first one is a schlieren texture of a nematic film.
• This picture was taken under a polarization microscope with polarizer and analyzer
crossed
• . From every point defect emerge four dark brushes.
• For these directions the director is parallel either to the polarizer or to the analyzer.
• The colors are newton colors of thin films and depend on the thickness of the sample
NEMATIC TEXTURES
• . Point defects can only exist in pairs.
• One can see two types of boojums with “opposite sign of
topological charge”; one type with yellow and red brushes, the
other kind not that colorful.
• The difference in appearance is due to different core
structures for these defects of different “charge”.
• The second texture is a thin film on isotropic surface.
• Here the periodic stripe structure is a spectacular
consequence of the confined nature of the film.
NEMATIC TEXTURES
• It is a result of the competition between elastic inner forces and
surface anchoring forces.
• The surface anchoring forces want to align the liquid crystals
parallel to the bottom surface and perpendicular to the top surface
of the film.
• The elastic forces work against the resulting “vertical” distortions
of the director field.
• When the film is sufficiently thin, the lowest energy state is
surprisingly archived by “horizontal” director deformations in the
plane of the film.
• The current picture shows a 1-dimensional periodic pattern.
EXAMPLES OF NEMATIC MESOPHASES
EXAMPLES OF NEMATIC MESOPHASES
• (PAA) p-azoxyanisole. From a rough steric point of view, this
is a rigid rod of length ∼ 20˚A and width ∼ 5˚A. The nematic
state is found at high temperatures (between 1160C and
1350C at atmospheric pressure).
• (MMBA) N-(p-methoxybenzylidene)- p-butylaniline. The
nematic state is found at room temperatures (between 200C
to 470C). Lacks chemical stability.
• (5CB) 4-pentyl-4’-cyanobiphenyl. The nematic state is found
at room temperatures (between 240C and 350C).
APPLICATIONS OF NEMATIC COMPOUNDS
• Nematic liquid crystals (NLC) are applied for
detection of surface inhomogeneities in non-
biological objects,
• proposed as an instrument for the objective
microscopic diagnosis of malignancies in
oncological practice..
APPLICATIONS OF NEMATIC COMPOUNDS
• Nematic liquid crystals, for example, tend to be relatively
translucent, but many of them become opaque when an
electric field is applied and the molecular orientation
changes. This behavior is ideal for producing dark images
on a light surface , and it is used in the LCDs in
• digital watches;
• handheld calculators;
• flat-screen monitors;
• and car, ship, and aircraft instrumentation.
• NLC make it possible to build a liquid crystal
thermometer that indicates temperature by
color
• also we can use liquid crystals in heat-
sensitive films to detect flaws in electronic
board connections where overheating can
occur.
SMECTICS
SMECTICS
• The important feature of the smectic phase,
which distinguishes it from the nematic, is its
stratification.
• The molecules are arranged in layers and
exhibit some correlations in their positions in
addition to the orientational ordering.
• A number of different classes of smectics
have been recognized.
SMETICS
smectic A
SMECTIC A
• In smectic A phase the molecules are aligned
perpendicular to the layers, with no long-
range crystalline order within a layer .
• The layers can slide freely over one another.
SMECTIC C
• SMECTIC C
SMECTIC C
• In the smectic C phase the preferred axis is
not perpendicular to the layers, so that the
phase has biaxial symmetry.
• In smectic B phase there is hexagonal
crystalline order within the layers.
SMECTIC B PHASE
• Smectic B phases are divided into three subgroups,
B1, B2, and B3.
• The characteristics of these subgroups are as follows.
• B1: optically uniaxial,
molecules perpendicular to smectic planes, and order within
the layers.
• B2: optically biaxial,
• molecules tilted with respect to planes, order within the
layers, and possibly also order between the layers.
SMECTIC B
• B3: optically uniaxial, molecules apparently
tilted with respect to planes, and layers
probably free to rotate on each other.
• the smectic phases occur in the order A → C
→ B as the temperature decreases.
REFERENCES
References
• [1] P. G. de Gennes and J. Prost. The Physics of Liquid Crystals. Clarendon Press, Oxford,
second, paperback edition, 1995.
• [2] P. M. Chaikin and T. C. Lubensky. Principles of Condensed Matter Physics.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995.
• [3] O. D. Lavrentovich and M. Kleman. Defects and Topology of Cholesteric Liquid
Crystals, in Chirality in Liquid Crystals. Springer Verlag, New York, 2001.
.
• [4] Iam-Choon Khoo and Shin-Tson Wug. Optics and Nonlinear Optics of Liquid Crystals.
World Scientific, 1993.
• [5] Ingo Dierking. Textures of Liquid Crystals. Wiley-VCH, 2003.
• [6] Epifanio G. Virga. Variation Theories for Liquid Crystals. CRC Press, 1994
