Disordered systems liquid-like behavior

Liquid crystals are intermediate states of matter or mesophases, halfway between an isotropic liquid and a solid crystal. In nature, some substances, or even mixtures of substances, present these mesomorphic states. These liquid crystalline phases exhibit a local disorder ( liquid-like behavior) and are dynamic at a molecular level, but a long-range order exists, which endows it with unique rheological, mass transport, and optical properties. Liquid crystals offer a number of useful properties for the drug delivery. Solubilization of drug in the liquid crystalline is similar to the solubilization of drug in micelles. Simultaneously, increase in viscosity of the system helps to provide more... 

Phase transitions of confined fluids were extensively studied by various theoretical approaches and by computer simulations (see Refs. [28, 278] for review). The modification of the fluid phase diagrams in confinement was extensively studied theoretically for two main classes of porous media single pores (stit-Uke and cylindrical) and disordered porous systems. In a slit-like pore, there are true phase transitions that assume coexistence of infinite phases. Accordingly, the liquid-vapor critical point is a true critical point, which belongs to the universality class of 2D Ising model. Asymptotically close to the pore critical point, the coexistence curve in slit pore is characterized by the critical exponent of the order parameter = 0.125. The crossover from 3D critical behavior at low temperature to the 2D critical behavior near the critical point occurs when the 3D correlation length becomes comparable with the pore width i/p. 

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