The confluence of the fields of liquid crystals and biomedical engineering is resulting in remarkable interdisciplinary research. This book focuses on the potential for inherently translational research in one field of engineering to radically alter the scope of another. The text reviews the exciting advances being made in displays, spectroscopy, sensors and diagnostics, biomimicking, actuators and lasers with regards to liquid crystalline materials, and biomedicine. The liquid crystal field ? which has delivered revolutionary devices in the display, optics, and telecommunications industries ? is now poised to make significant inroads into biology, medicine, and biomedical engineering.

The confluence of the fields of liquid crystals and biomedical engineering is resulting in remarkable interdisciplinary research. This book focuses on the potential for inherently translational research in one field of engineering to radically alter the scope of another. The text reviews the exciting advances being made in displays, spectroscopy, sensors and diagnostics, biomimicking, actuators and lasers with regards to liquid crystalline materials, and biomedicine. The liquid crystal field — which has delivered revolutionary devices in the display, optics, and telecommunications industries — is now poised to make significant inroads into biology, medicine, and biomedical engineering.

This book reviews comprehensively the technological, scientific, artistic and medical applications of liquid crystals. It starts with the basics of liquid crystals and covers electro-optical, thermo-optical, colour, polymeric, lyotropic, and scientific applications of liquid crystalline materials. It discusses the fabrication and operational principles of a full range of liquid crystal displays including dynamic scattering, twisted nematic, supertwisted nematic, dichroic, smectic A, ferroelectric, polymer dispersed, light valve, active matrix, etc., in detail. It also covers the emerging applications of liquid crystals such as optical computing, nonlinear optics, decorative and visual arts. Classification, theory, chemical structure, physical properties and surface alignment of liquid crystals have detailed chapters to facilitate the basic understanding of the science behind LCDs and other uses of liquid crystals. The chapters, liquid crystal polymers and lyotropic liquid crystals, give deep insight into these areas. The potential uses and applications are also described in detail.

The work focuses on recent developments of the rapidly evolving field of Non-conventional Liquid Crystals. After a concise introduction it discusses the most promising research such as biosensing, elastomers, polymer films , photoresponsive properties and energy harvesting. Besides future applications it discusses as well potential frontiers in LC science and technology.

Over the past ten years liquid crystals have attracted much interest and considerable progress has been made with respect to our knowledge in this field. The recent development was initiated mainly by the work of J. L. Fergason and G. H. Heilmeier, who pointed out the importance of liquid crystals for thermographic and electro optic applications. The first part of this book is a brief introduction to the physics of liquid crystals. The structures and properties of the three basic types of liquid crystals are discussed. A special paragraph is devoted to electric-field effects, which are important in display applications. The chapter on Scientific Applications gives an insight into the potential applications of liquid crystals in fundamental research, with special emphasis on explaining the principles involved. Two groups of potential applications are discussed in detail: 1. the use of liquid crystals as anisotropic solvent for the determination of molecular properties by means of spectroscopy, and 2. their use in analytical chemistry, particularly in gas chromatography. The reverse process involves the use of the dissolved molecules as microscopic probes in the investigation of the dynamical molecular structure of anisotropic fluid systems (e.g. biological membranes). This extremely important technique is also described.

Covering numerous practical applications as yet not covered in any single source of information, this monograph discusses the importance of viscous and elastic properties for applications in both display and non-display technologies. The very well-known authors are major players in this field of research and pay special attention here to the use of liquid crystals in fiber optic devices as applied in telecommunication circuits.