Calamitic Liquid Crystals A Short Introduction

As early as 1888 the Austrian botanist F. Reinitzer [1] found that cholesteryl benzoate, if heated above its melting point, 146.6 °C, forms a milky, iridescent fluid with some of the typical characteristics of a liquid and some of a crystal [2]. On further heating above 180.6 °C a clear melt is obtained. On cooling the effect was found to be reversible. 

The subsequently so-called mesophase combines its fluidity with some typical anisotropic properties of the solid, crystalline state, for example birefringence. In the years which followed this phenomenon became the subject of intensive study [3] and it was found that many compounds with rod-like molecular geometry formed liquid crystalline phases [4]. 

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