Liquid Crystals Based on Cold Compounds

Most solid materials produce isotropic liquids directly upon melting. However, in some cases one or more intermediate phases are formed (called mesophases), where the material retains some ordered structure but already shows the mobility characteristic of a liquid. These materials are liquid crystal (LCs)(or mesogens) of the thermotropic type, and can display several transitions between phases at different temperatures crystal-crystal transition (between solid phases), melting point (solid to first mesophase transition), mesophase-mesophase transition (when several mesophases exist), and clearing point (last mesophase to isotropic liquid transition) [1]. Often the transitions are observed both upon heating and on cooling (enantiotropic transitions), but sometimes they appear only upon cooling (monotropic transitions). 

Similar behavior can occur when a crystalline network is disassembled by adding a solvent rather than by heating. These mesogens are called lyotropic liquid crystals and the mesophase formation shows temperature and concentration dependence. They are very important in biological systems, but have been much less studied in materials science. 

Liquid crystal behavior is a genuine supramolecular phenomenon based on the existence of extended weak interactions (dipole-dipole, dispersion forces, hydrogen bonding) between molecules. For the former two to be important enough, it is usually necessary for the molecules to have anisotropic shapes, able to pack efficiently so that these weak interactions can accumulate and co-operate, so as to keep the molecules associated in a preferred orientation, but free enough to move and slide, as they are not connected by rigid bonds. 

In the smectic mesophases the molecules are oriented, as in a nematic mesophase, with their principal axis roughly parallel to the director, but they are also defining layers. These layers can be perpendicular to the director, as in the smectic A mesophase (SmA), or tilted, as in the smectic C (SmC). The SmA and SmC mesophases are the less ordered and more common smectic mesophases. Other less common types of smectic mesophases are known, which differ in the degree or kind of molecular ordering within and between the layers [2]. 

When the mesogenic compounds are chiral (or when chiral molecules are added as dopants) chiral mesophases can be produced, characterized by helical ordering of the constituent molecules in the mesophase. The chiral nematic phase is also called cholesteric, taken from its first observation in a cholesteryl derivative more than one century ago. These chiral structures have reduced symmetry, which can lead to a variety of interesting physical properties such as thermocromism, ferroelectricity, and so on. 

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