Ferroelectric and antiferroelectric liquid crystals

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• Prof. Helen Gleeson, University of Manchester
• Friday 07 May 2010, 14:00-15:00
• Physics East 217.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Elizabeth Blackburn.

Liquid crystals are fascinating materials that are best thought of as ordered fluids and which are best known for their use in flat panel displays and TVs. Some liquid crystals exhibit ferroelectric, ferrielectric and antiferroelectric phases. Such systems have been known for the last 20 years or so, though details of their structures have only emerged much more recently using powerful techniques including resonant x-ray scattering. They are of considerable interest from an applications point of view because of their fast (microsecond), multistate electro-optic switching. From a more fundamental point of view, they offer unique systems to study as they are the only fluid systems that exhibit these electrical properties, and, as self-ordering materials, there are lessons to learn about how small changes in structure at a molecular level are manifest in significant differences in self-assembled structures and the resultant bulk properties.

This talk explains how these properties can occur in liquid crystals, what experimental methods can be used to understand the systems and also what some of the possible applications are.

This talk is part of the Condensed Matter Physics Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Cond. Mat. seminar
• Condensed Matter Physics Seminars
• Physics East 217
• What's on in Physics?

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