Liquid Crystals with Nano/micro Particles and Its Applications

Book excerpt: "Recent advancement of Nanotechnology has opened up a new door in the field of liquid crystal. For many materials, the transition between the liquid and the solid phase is not a single-step process, but a range of various mesophases, which are called liquid crystals (LCs). LCs are self-organized anisotropic fluids that are thermodynamically located between the isotropic liquid and the crystalline phase, exhibiting the fluidity of liquids as well as the long-range lattice order that can only be found in crystalline solids. The addition of nanomaterials to a LC material produces a composite or colloidal dispersion and resulting into a revolutionary change in their applications"--