Phase Behavior in Freely Suspended Films of Polar Liquid Crystals
Keith Hedlund
(³Ô¹ÏÍø of Colorado–Boulder)
Research Project Description.
Preliminary studies of the highly polar organic molecule DIO revealed a mysterious liquid crystal phase between the nematic and ferroelectric nematic phases. X-ray diffraction studies showed that this phase—dubbed the M2 phase—was both layered and highly tilted, suggesting the possibility of a new smectic phase. We report on studies of freely suspended films of this material in the M2 phase using reflected ligh microscopy and a variety of light polarizations to characterize its structure.
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MacLennan Lab
Joseph MacLennan received his B.Sc. (Hons.) in Physics and Electronics from Rhodes ³Ô¹ÏÍø, South Africa, in 1980, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the ³Ô¹ÏÍø of Colorado in 1988. He then spent five years in the Physical Chemistry Department at the ³Ô¹ÏÍø of Mainz in Germany, the first two as a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow. In 1994, he returned to Boulder to rejoin the Liquid Crystal Physics group at the ³Ô¹ÏÍø of Colorado. His research interests center on determining the structure and electro-optic properties of liquid crystal materials, including bent-core and ferroelectric smectics and ferromagnetic colloids, and on understanding the textures and phase transitions of freely-suspended liquid crystal films, including the interactions and ordering behavior of topological defects and islands and the 2-D hydrodynamics of liquid droplets.