Liquid crystals on the move

by Per Rudquist (Chalmers University of Technology)

Tuesday 13 Dec 2011, 13:30 → 14:30 Europe/Stockholm

122:026 (Nordita)

In the last 40 years liquid crystal display (LCD) technology has gone from simple displays in calculators and watches to the highly advanced large area LCD-TVs of today. With the exception of some ultrafast microdisplays, LCDs are still based on the simplest form of liquid crystal (nematic). The increasing demands regarding speed and resolution, 3D-TV, and now also power consumption of LCDs, has led to a renewed and increasing interest in the much faster - but also much more complex – polar liquid crystals (e.g. chiral smectic liquid crystals) for the next generation of displays. I will discuss the latest development in these materials for different kinds of application, with some emphasis on our work on so-called orthoconic antiferroelectrics. Somewhat shadowed by the enormous success of LCDs is the fact that liquid crystal science and technology has important implications in many fundamental disciplines, not only regarding fundamental theories and models of liquid crystals but also for new types of applications and uses far away from displays, such as chemical sensors, diagnostic devices, actuators, spectrometers, and self-assembling complex matter. I will give two examples from our own recent research activities. The first is chiral detection, where liquid crystal based measurements of enantiomeric excess have shown to be extremely sensitive. The second is the field of so-called liquid crystal shells, where one proposed application is to use the topological defects in the shells as linker anchoring points for self-assembly of colloidal diamond structures.