Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials

Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials (ALCOM) Liquid crystal investigators, research, and conferences, http / /alcom.kent.edu/ALCOM/ALCOM. html... 

Liquid Crystal Institute and NSF Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials Center, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242... 

The author acknowledges the support of ALCOM (Advanced Liquid Crystalline Optical Materials) DMR 8920147 and the students whose work was responsible for the citations in this paper. 

Noel C, Kajzar F (1998) Highly orientable liquid crystalline polymers for quadratic nonlinear optics. In Prasad PN, Mark JE, Kandil SH, Kafafi Z (eds) Proceedings of the fourth international conference on frontiers of polymers and advanced materials, Plenum Press, New York, p 275... 

In recent years liquid crystalline thermosetting polymers have been the object of extensive research and patent activity (1-8). The interest in these materials lies in their challenging theoretical implications and in the noticeable potential applications. Highly crosslinked liquid crystalline thermosets turned out to be promising candidates for thin film applications in electronic packaging and as matrix materials for advanced composites due to their superior mechanical properties and heat resistance (4-6) on the other hand, lightly crosslinked networks can be easily oriented by mechanical stress and this results in a change of their optical properties (9). Applications as... 

The development in the last century of a theory of liquid crystalline behaviour and of transfer matrices to understand optical equations, along with the use of computer simulations, has allowed us to understand the theory of these chiral materials. Furthermore, technological advances including electron microscopes have allowed us to unlock the structures of the natural world that create our most vivid materials. We now have the opportunity to capitalise on these in the creation of biocompatible and biomimetic materials using the natural phenomenon of self-assembly observed for abundant and easily processable biopolymers. 

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