Radial birefringence

Birefringence (or double refraction) is the decomposition of a light ray into two rays when it passes through certain types of crystalline material. This occurs only when the material is anisotropic, that is, the material has different characteristics in different directions. Amylose and amylopectin polymers are organized into a radially anisotropic, semicrystalline unit in the starch granule. This radial anisotropy is responsible for the distinctive... 

For polymer melts another type of apparatus has been designed in order to measure flow birefringence in the same plane (17). This apparatus is of the cone-and-plate type. In this apparatus the light beam is directed in a radial direction. The principles of other arrangements, which were designed for the measurement of flow birefringence in a plane perpendicular to the plane of flow, will receive special attention in Section 1.5. 

It is evident that the contributions due to angular movements are caused by diffusion forces corresponding to the state of orientation, whereas the radial component is a hydrodynamic contribution. The radial force, as exerted by the flowing solvent, is balanced by the rigidity of the rod and has no consequences for the birefringence of orientation. According to eqs. (5.15), one obtains for rigid dumb-bells ... 

In a parallel-disk device, the shear rate, and hence the Ericksen number, increases linearly with radial position r. Thus, the midplane director angle 0 also increases with r. This produces an increasing birefringence which can be observed if the parallel disks are transparent (see Fig. 10-17). The multiple, concentric rings in Fig. 10-17 correspond to... 

When a bicontinuous cubic lipid-water phase is mechanically fragmented in the presence of a liposomal dispersion or of certain micellar solutions e.g. bile salt solution), a dispersion can be formed with high kinetic stability. In the polarising microscope it is sometimes possible to see an outer birefringent layer with radial symmetry (showing an extinction cross like that exhibited by a liposome). However, the core of these structures is isotropic. Such dispersions are formed in ternary systems, in a region where the cubic phase coexists in equilibrium with water and the L(x phase. The dispersion is due to a localisation of the La phase outside cubic particles. The structure has been confirmed by electron microscopy by Landh and Buchheim [15], and is shown in Fig. 5.4. It is natural to term these novel structures "cubosomes". They are an example of supra self-assembly. 

The radial configuration occurs when the liquid crystal molecules are anchored with their long axes perpendicular to the droplet wall (Figure 3B). The radial droplet is not birefringent. Application of an external field switches the radial droplet to an axial configuration. As with the bipolar case the films switch from scattering to transparent upon application of an electric field if np=n0. 

Fig. 12. Diagram of a wedge cut on the end of a fiber. The fringe pattern in the upper picture shows the portion of the fringes formed in the case of a uniform radial distribution of birefringence [Gurnee (22)]...

In contrast to the fibrous and well-oriented polysaccharides (such as cellulose and chitin), amylose in its natural state is found only in more-or-less spherical starch granules. Amylose is the minor constituent of most starches, and is a linear polymer of a-D-(l—>4)-linked D-glucose residues. The birefringence of starch grains was already well known at the turn of the century, and the cross of isocline pattern between crossed Nicols was interpreted in terms of radially arranged crystallites. Later,... 

An ordered packing of macromolecules may also cause an optical anisotropy and birefringence, which are characteristic, for instance, of polymer spherulites. Because of the radial anisotropy of a spheruHte and the convergence of beams in the spherical structure, the interference picture represents the so-caUed Maltese cross, the center of which is located in the center of spherulite. No calculations are performed using such a picture but the photoelasticity method is very efficient in revealing qualitatively the presence of any spherulites, or a mesomorphic or ordered sate of polymeric chains. 

---