Liquid crystals (LCs) were discovered more than a century ago, and were, for a long time, treated as a physical curiosity, until the development of flat panel screens and display devices caused a revolution in the information display industry, and in fact in society. There would be no mobile phones without liquid crystals, no flat screen TVs or computer monitors, no virtual reality, just to name a few of the applications that have changed our whole world of vision and perception. All of these inventions are based on liquid crystals that are formed through a change in temperature, thermotropic LCs. However, there is another form of liquid crystals, described even earlier, yet much less talked about; the lyotropic liquid crystals that occur through the change of concentration of some molecules in a solvent. These are found in abundance in nature, making up the cell membranes, and are used extensively in the food, detergents and cosmetics industries. In this collection of articles by experts in their respective research areas, we bring together some of the most recent and innovative aspects of lyotropic liquid crystals, which we believe will drive future research and set novel trends in this field.

Liquid crystals (LCs) were discovered more than a century ago, and were, for a long time, treated as a physical curiosity, until the development of flat panel screens and display devices caused a revolution in the information display industry, and in fact in society. There would be no mobile phones without liquid crystals, no flat screen TVs or computer monitors, no virtual reality, just to name a few of the applications that have changed our whole world of vision and perception. All of these inventions are based on liquid crystals that are formed through a change in temperature, thermotropic LCs. However, there is another form of liquid crystals, described even earlier, yet much less talked about; the lyotropic liquid crystals that occur through the change of concentration of some molecules in a solvent. These are found in abundance in nature, making up the cell membranes, and are used extensively in the food, detergents and cosmetics industries. In this collection of articles by experts in their respective research areas, we bring together some of the most recent and innovative aspects of lyotropic liquid crystals, which we believe will drive future research and set novel trends in this field.

This book aims to review the field of lyotropic liquid crystals from amphiphilic to colloidal systems, bridging the gap between the two worlds of lyotropics and thermotropics by showing that many of the features observed in standard thermotropic liquid crystals may also be observed in lyotropic systems and vice versa. Indeed, for a long time, lyotropic liquid crystals have been overshadowed by their thermotropic counterparts, mainly due to the potential for application of the latter in the display industry. This picture has somewhat shifted over the last decade, with numerous novel lyotropic systems having been discovered and formulated, bringing to light their importance in wider scientific research. For example, the understanding of viruses forming self-assembled ordered phases has largely increased as mineral liquid crystals and clays have experienced a renaissance leading to fundamental research and work on structure formation in nanotechnology. Similarly, nano-rods, nano-wires, nanotubes and 2D materials like graphene oxide and others have been shown to exhibit liquid crystalline behaviour, which may be exploited in self-assembly, drug delivery or biosensors. Cellulose nanocrystals have become an important and popular field of research. The self-assembly of short chain DNA fragments has led to liquid crystal behaviour previously thought to be impossible. Chromonics were shown to exhibit fascinating physical properties, and the combination of active fluids with liquid crystals has opened a whole new field of research to be explored - 'living liquid crystals'.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Nanomaterials in Liquid Crystals" that was published in Nanomaterials