These volumes are a result of the personal research and graduate lectures given by the authors at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon and the University of Paris VII, respectively. Featuring an easy-to-follow, accessible style, each volume describes important concepts and physical properties using classroom-friendly experiments, many of which the professors used in their own classes, and clear diagrams.
Although Smectic and Columnar Liquid Crystals: Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments can be used as an independent text, it is an ideal and complementary companion to Nematic and Cholesteric Liquid Crystals: Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments.
Featuring topics that seldom appear in current literature, these volumes represent an ideal introduction and a valuable source of reference for theoretical and experimental studies of advanced students and researchers in liquid crystals, condensed matter physics, and materials science.
Nematic and Cholesteric Liquid Crystals: Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments
OVERVIEW
Some History
Modern Classification of Liquid Crystals
Mesogenic Anatomy
MESOPHASES WITH AN ORIENTATIONAL ORDER
Structure and Dielectric Properties of the Nematic Phase
Nematoelasticity: Frederiks Transition and Light Scattering
Nematodynamics and Flow Instabilities
Defects and Textures in Nematics
Anchoring and Anchoring Transitions of Nematics on Solid Surfaces
The Nematic-Isotropic Liquid Interface: Static Properties and Directional Growth Instabilities
Cholesterics: the First Example of a Frustrated Mesophase
Blue Phases: a Second Example of a Frustrated Mesophase
Overview of Growth Phenomena and the Mullins-Sekerka Instability
Subject index
Author index
Smectic and Columnar Liquid Crystals: Concepts and Physical Properties Illustrated by Experiments
Dedication
Preface to the English edition
SMECTIC AND COLUMNAR LIQUID CRYSTALS
Structure of the Smectic A Phase and the Transition Toward the Nematic Phase
Continuum Theory of Smectics A Hydrodynamics
Dislocations, Focal Conics, and Rheology of Smectics A
Ferroelectric and Antiferroelectric Mesophases
The Twist-Grain Boundary Smectics
Hexatic Smectics
The Smectic B Plastic Crystal
Smectic Free Films
Columnar Phases
Growth of a Columnar Hexagonal Phase
Subject index
Author index
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