Nematic liquid

Fig. 9-6. Phase diagram of ferrocenes 11. Melting point nematic/isotropic liquid transition smectic A/isotropic liquid transition A isotropic liquid/smectic A transition O isotropic liquid/nematic transition.

Optical texture observations and X-ray investigations showed that the polyacrylate 41 PA 3 and the copolymer 45 (x=0.8) form nematic phases. The polymethacrylate 41 PMA 3 and the copoly ether 45 (x=0.55) display no liquid crystallinity at rest, but exhibit a virtual isotropic liquid-nematic transition a few degrees below Tg, as evidenced by miscibility studies. Copolyether 46 does not show any threaded or schlieren texture, which would be characteristic of a nematic. 

The term mesophase also includes ordered liquids (nematic, smectic, cholesteric and discotics), which present long-range orientational order like in a solid, but positional disorder like in a liquid [2]. In these materials, large-scale molecular motion is possible, which is a characteristic of the liquid state rather than of the solid state. The term liquid crystals is conventionally used to address them. This sub-class of mesophases will not be treated in this context. 

In textbooks on the phase rule the first one — the number of components — is chosen as the main classification principle. As to the kinds of phases the phase rule has, strictly speaking, hardly any interest at all. The phases are only labelled as gaseous, liquid, nematic, smectic, or crystalline, to indicate that they are different, so that they can be counted and thus the number of phases can be obtained. 

Isotropic Liquid-Nematic Transition 6.2.1 Landau-De Gennes Equation... 

The mesophases differ from each other regarding the positional order of the molecules (Fig. l). In the nematic phase there is no long range positional order at all just as in isotropic liquids. Nematics are normally uniaxial, however biaxial nematics were discovered very recently. In the smectic phases the centre of masses of the molecules are concentrated in layers forming a one-dimensional density wave. In the smectic A and C phases there is no long-range positional order within the layers. The smectic A phase is uniaxial, the director (n) is parallel with the layer normal, 1. In the C phase the director is tilted with respect to the layer normal. This phase is biaxial although the deviation from uniaxiality is usually small. There are further smectic phases in which the molecules form two-dimensional lattices within the layers (ordered smectic phases). The difference between ordered... 

Figures 3 a, b, c show the temperature dependences of viscosity for the solutions under study. The above dependences are described by curves with well-pronounced sharp maxima. This behavior is typical of the solutions with LC transitions (Kulichikhin Golova, 1985, Vshivkov Rusinova, 2008, Gray, 1962). According to Gray (1962), this profile of the temperature dependences of viscosity corresponds to the (isotropic liquid)-(nematic liquid crystal) phase transition. Therefore, upon cooling of HPC, CEC and PBG solutions under deformation conditions, no cholesteric crystals are formed in other words, under dynamic conditions, a liquid crystal changes its type from cholesteric to nematic. The results obtained are in good agreement with the data of other authors (Volkova et al., 1986), who showed that the shear deformation of CEC solutions (c= 30%) in trifluoroacetic acid and a 2 1...

If a substance shows both nematic and smectic trimorphous phases, the order of phase stability with decreasing temperature will be Isotropic liquid —>> nematic — smectic A — smectic C... 

Theory of light scattering by liquid nematics" (Orsay Liquid Cryst. Group), Liquid Crystals and Ordered Fluids, p. 195 (1970). 

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